The Little Workers

There are merry little spirits in innumerable swarms, 
   Of an essence so divine, and so wholly crystalline, 
The fancyless know nothing of their volatile forms;
   Are faithless of their being, in their own dull seeing, 
And deem the thrill a madness, which the Poet's heart warms, 
   As the glance of their dance, for a flash as they advance,
With overwhelming Beauty his brain and bosom storms.

They are busy in the forests, in the morning of the year,
   When the relics of decay are hurrying away, 
And the eager little buds so daringly appear ;
   They crowd in every budling — all emulously hudling,
With its juices and its hues,—each toiling in his sphere;
As a girl would unfurl her every fettered curl, 
They ope the prisoned season to the merry- hearted seer.

They are busy in the shower, when the cloud is on its track; —
   Each governing a ball of the water in its fall — 
And they shout their tiny glee when the bright globes crack, 
   Into white spray flashing, with a music in their plashing,
While the sheets of the shower from the sky hang slack; 
   And they sing, as they spring for their homes, on the wing, 
Till the green earth laughs with the merry, merry pack !

They are busy at the brook, as it glimmers in the dell; 
   And they pour its sunny drops from a million little cups —
Then dance upon the ripples of the tide as they swell; 
   They attune the tiny tinkle of the reed-shivered wrinkle,
And the gurgle in the gravel of a moss-hidden well: 
   How their bands clap their hands till the frolic water stands 
Like joy, mute for depth, in the pool where it fell!

Ye may see them in our mornings, on the edges of the mist,
   When its buddings, as of pearl, into roses unfurl, 
And the earth turns gold to the mighty Alchemist;
   So gorgeously enfolden, in rosy light and golden, 
They are drunken with the glory by whose beams they exist:
   Hue by hue from the view they are lost in the blue. 
Like a loved one of us by the Death-god kiss'd.

They are busy in the clouds, with their many shaded hues;
   In the meadow, in the air — they are busy every where, 
From the sphering of a star, to the sphering of the dews;
   But the little sprites are lurking, with a subtler under working,
In the cunning human brain, and its fancies interfuse 
   With their higher vital fire, and the sparkles which aspire
To the Spirit of their spirits — to the glory which we choose.