Here Is the Place Where Loveliness Keeps House

HERE is the place where Loveliness keeps house,

Between the river and the wooded hills,

Within a valley where the Springtime spills

Her firstling wind-flowers under blossoming boughs:

Where Summer sits braiding her warm, white brows

With bramble-roses; and where Autumn fills

Her lap with asters; and old Winter frills

With crimson haw and hip his snowy blouse.

Here you may meet with Beauty. Here she sits

Gazing upon the moon, or all the day

Tuning a wood-thrush flute, remote, unseen:

Or when the storm is out, ’t is she who flits

From rock to rock, a form of flying spray,

Shouting, beneath the leaves’ tumultuous green.