Through the Green Forest

Through the green forest softly without a sound,
Wrapped in a still mood
As in a cloak and hood
I went, and cast no shadow in the shadow of the wood.

There grew beeches taller than a ship’s mast
That rocks from wave to wave
On the great seas of the world.
I looked into their tops;
Their tops were in another world;
Tossed in a sunny air as far from me
As the foam on waves that follow each other fast,
All day, unseen by man, over the sunny sea.

Naked birches, whiter than a god’s thigh,
I saw, and stared, between the stems of the black pines;
Boulders whiter than a dream remembered by day
Stood in the brook’s way,
Damp with mosses greener than an emerald’s eye.

And ferns where the water sloped from stone to stone in the clear dark
Without ripple or speech
Curved motionless, rooted in rotted bark
And leaves laid together and the rifled husks of the beech.