The Spirit of the Woods [poem by William Blocksidge (William Baylebridge)]

[Editor: This poem by William Blocksidge (also known as William Baylebridge) was published in Songs o’ the South (1908).]

The Spirit of the Woods

Dear Spirit of the Woods, whose whisp’ring voice
The keynote sounds of songs divine and floods
My soul with music, how I love to be
With thee, and hear thy tender tones, that fill,
Like jewels rare, the casket of my thoughts!
Thou speakest in the winds: thy softened sighs
The trees, green mantle wrapped, more loud repeat.
Thou tell’st of mighty battles — how that man,
On pilgrimage to find Eternity,
Must first a multitude of demons slay
Ere life be death, and death be life. The stream,
Hasting with glee the upland heights to leave,
With rippling laughter wakes the shady grove
And tells of thee. And, Spirit of the Woods,
Thou liv’st amid such sylvan loveliness,
’Twere hard to know if thou from it dost borrow,
Or dost to it thy beauty lend. How sweet
The peaceful blessing thou alone canst give,
And givest now, to soothe my troubled being!
What healthful joys, by thine own hand prepared,
Thou pourest now my heart’s low cup to fill!
Thy hand it is the mossy crown that winds,
The brows of lowly stones to deck, and thus
The humble to exalt. Among these dells,
Where warbling birds but lend their tuneful lays
To furnish grace-notes for thy harmonies,
Might safely romp and revel fairy bands,
For thou art kindred to the wizard kind.
Ever, O Spirit, art thou here to give
Thy benediction; but I love thee best
When in the sky the soft moon sadly sits,
Or, like a gallant vessel, rides a sea
Of cloudy billows, now but tossed above
The summits of the wat’ry hills, and now
Deep sunk below the surge’s wild abyss.
For then, O Spirit, when the broken arch
Of shade-filled foliage lets in her rays
To throw a chequered silver mantle o’er
The sleeping shrubs, thy voice, in cadence sweet,
Speaks fuller messages to fill my soul.