Nature-notes and impressions : in prose and verse / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]

From the hilltop here in Kentucky, under the Aprilian blue of a perfect afternoon, a great blur of glimmering amber, gold tinged with auburn,

shows me where the budded but still blossomless black-haw stands covered with young leaves; as tenderly tinted as the festal raiment of some sylvan of the woods, or haunter of the valleys: some Dryad or Auloniad, who has come forth, slenderly and delicately, from her tree or bower to greet and meet the young-eyed Year.

Or is it the Rapunzel Spring herself, delicate and divine, odorous of fable, who has let down her tawny hair, its magnificent mane of abundant and beautiful gold, for her lover, the Wind, to clasp, to overwhelm himself with; to kiss and climb by into her enchanted tower, there to deliver himself over forever to her love?