Nature

Warm into praises, kindling muse,
With grateful transport raise thy views
To Him, who moves this ball,
Who whirls, in silent harmony,
The earth, the ocean, air, and sky--
O praise the Lord of all!

Ye angels--hymning round your king,
Praise Him who gives you power to sing,
Ye hosts--with raptures burn;
Who station'd you in bliss, proclaim!
Oh, bless your benefactor's name,
Betokening kind return.

Ye spreading heavens, arching high,
Ye scenes unknown beyond the sky,
Creation's Maker own:
"Let there be light "--your Ruler said;
And instant your blue curtain spread
In triumph round his throne.

Thou moon, meek guardian of the night,
Ye planets of inferior light,
Ye lamps of rays divine,
Ye suns--dart forth your splendid ra...

Where is the bard, O river grand and old,
That has thy praises sung, thy beauties told,
In measures lofty as the mighty pride
That lingers in thy deep and flowing tide?
And where the echoing measures low and sweet
That should thine own faint rippling songs repeat?

The eyes of nature ever turned on thee
Watch o'er thy restless wandering to the sea;
The rosy morn awakes thee from thy sleep;
Along thy dusky waves her glances creep,
And o'er the weird dark shadows of the night
She spreads her sunny robes of morning light.

The yellow noon comes too, with fiery eyes,
And all unwept the dewy morning dies;
Thy waters run in waves of rippling gold,
And all the rivers sacred deemed of old
Are not so grand as thee, nor yet so fair.
Amid the mists that fi...

What things for dream there are when spectre-like,
Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubble field,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.
I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp

Meek Twilight! soften the declining day,
    And bring the hour my pensive spirit loves;
When, o'er the mountain flow descends the ray
    That gives to silence the deserted groves.
Ah, let the happy court the morning still,
    When, in her blooming loveliness array'd,
She bids fresh beauty light the vale, or hill,
    And rapture warble in the vocal shade.
Sweet is the odour of the morning's flower,
    And rich in melody her accents rise;
Yet dearer to my soul the shadowy hour,
    At which her blossoms close, her music dies -
For then, while languid nature droops her head,
She wakes the tear 'tis luxury to shed.

Unto a pleasant grove or such like place,
Where here the curious cutting of a hedge:
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge:
Here the fine setting of well-shading trees:
The walks there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravel and the green so equal lie,
It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye:
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,
Arising from the infinite repair
Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price,
(As if it were another Paradise)
So please the smelling sense, that you are fain
Where last you walk'd to turn and walk again.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing go:
Here further down an over-arched alley,<...

    "Dawn!" laughs the bow, and we straight see the sky,
        Crimson, and golden, and gray,
    See the rosy cloudlets go drifting by,
    And the sheen on the lark as, soaring high,
        He carols to greet the day.

    Fast moves the bow o'er the wonderful strings -
        We feel the joy in the air -
    'Tis alive with the glory of growing things,
    With wild honeysuckle that creeps and clings,
    Rose of the briar bush - queen of the springs -
        Anemones frail and fair!

    We listen, and whisper with laughter low,
    "It voices rare gladness, that ancient bow!"

    Then, sad as the plaint of a child at night -
        A child aweary with play -
    The falling of shadows, a lost delight,
    The moaning of watchers coun...

As I went through the marshes a doe sprang out of the corn and flashed up the hill-side leaving her fawn.

On the sky-line she moved round to watch, she pricked a fine black blotch on the sky.

I looked at her and felt her watching;
I became a strange being.
Still, I had my right to be there with her,

Her nimble shadow trotting along the sky-line, she put back her fine, level-balanced head.
And I knew her.

Ah yes, being male, is not my head hard-balanced, antlered?
Are not my haunches light?
Has she not fled on the same wind with me?
Does not my fear cover her fear?

IRSCHENHAUSEN

O to be a woman! to be left to pique and pine,
When the winds are out and calling to this vagrant heart of mine.
Whisht! it whistles at the windows, and how can I be still?
There! the last leaves of the beech-tree go dancing down the hill.
All the boats at anchor they are plunging to be free-
O to be a sailor, and away across the sea!
When the sky is black with thunder, and the sea is white with foam,
The gray-gulls whirl up shrieking and seek their rocky home,
Low his boat is lying leeward, how she runs upon the gale,
As she rises with the billows, nor shakes her dripping sail.
There is danger on the waters-there is joy where dangers be-
Alas! to be a woman and the nomad’s heart in me.

Ochone! to be a woman, only sighing on the shore-
With a soul that finds a passion ...

    Her thought that, like a brook beside the way,
        Sang to my steps through all the wandering year,
    Has ceased from melody--O Love, allay
                My sudden fear!

    She cannot fail--the beauty of that brow
        Could never flower above a desert heart--
    Somewhere beneath, the well-spring even now
                Lives, though apart.

    Some day, when winter has renewed her fount
        With cold, white-folded snows and quiet rain,
    O Love, O Love, her stream again will mount
                And sing again!

When June is here - what art have we to sing
    The whiteness of the lilies midst the green
    Of noon-tranced lawns? Or flash of roses seen
Like redbirds' wings? Or earliest ripening
Prince-Harvest apples, where the cloyed bees cling
    Round winey juices oozing down between
    The peckings of the robin, while we lean
In under-grasses, lost in marveling.
    Or the cool term of morning, and the stir
Of odorous breaths from wood and meadow walks,
    The bobwhite's liquid yodel, and the whir
Of sudden flight; and, where the milkmaid talks
Across the bars, on tilted barley-stalks
    The dewdrops' glint in webs of gossamer.

Below the sunset's range of rose,
Below the heaven's deepening blue,
Down woodways where the balsam blows,
And milkweed tufts hang, gray with dew,
A Jersey heifer stops and lows -
The cows come home by one, by two.

There is no star yet: but the smell
Of hay and pennyroyal mix
With herb aromas of the dell,
Where the root-hidden cricket clicks:
Among the ironweeds a bell
Clangs near the rail-fenced clover-ricks.

She waits upon the slope beside
The windlassed well the plum trees shade,
The well curb that the goose-plums hide;
Her light hand on the bucket laid,
Unbonneted she waits, glad-eyed,
Her gown as simple as her braid.

She sees fawn-colored backs among
The sumacs now; a tossing horn
Its clashing bell of copper rung:

The bird within its nest
    Has sung its evening hymn,
And I must go to quiet rest,
    As the bright west grows dim.

I see the twinkling star,
    That, when the sun has gone,
Is shining out the first afar,
    To tell us day is done.

If on this day I've been
    A selfish, naughty child,
May God forgive the wrong I've done,
    And make me kind and mild.

May he still bless and keep
    My father, mother dear;
And may the eye that cannot sleep
    Watch o'er our pillows here,

And guard us from all ill,
    Through this long, silent night,
And bring us, by His holy will,
    To see the morning light.

I know not wherefore, but mine eyes
    See bloom, where other eyes see blight.
They find a rainbow, a sunrise,
    Where others but discern deep night.

Men call me an enthusiast,
    And say I look through gilded haze:
Because where'er my gaze is cast,
    I see some thing that calls for praise.

I say, "Behold those lovely eyes -
    That tinted cheek of flower-like grace."
They answer in amused surprise:
    "We thought it such a common face."

I say, "Was ever scene more fair?
    I seem to walk in Eden's bowers."
They answer with a pitying air,
    "The weeds are choking out the flowers."

I know not wherefore, but God lent
    A deeper vision to my sight.
On whatsoe'er my gaze is bent
    I catch the beauty Infinite;

        I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
        And what did I see I had not seen before?
        Only a question less or a question more;
        Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
        Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
        House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
        Wild swans, come over the town, come over
        The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

    The first rose on my rose-tree
        Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
    During sad days when to me
            Nothing mattered.

    Grief of grief has drained me clean;
        Still it seems a pity
    No one saw,--it must have been
            Very pretty.

How shall I meet thee, Summer, wont to fill
My heart with gladness, when thy pleasant tide
First came, and on the Coomb's romantic side
Was heard the distant cuckoo's hollow bill!
Fresh flowers shall fringe the margin of the stream,
As with the songs of joyance and of hope
The hedge-rows shall ring loud, and on the slope
The poplars sparkle in the passing beam;
The shrubs and laurels that I loved to tend,
Thinking their May-tide fragrance would delight,
With many a peaceful charm, thee, my poor friend,
Shall put forth their green shoots, and cheer the sight!
But I shall mark their hues with sadder eyes,
And weep the more for one who in the cold earth lies!

Bush and vale thou fill'st again

With thy misty ray,
And my spirit's heavy chain

Castest far away.

Thou dost o'er my fields extend

Thy sweet soothing eye,
Watching like a gentle friend,

O'er my destiny.

Vanish'd days of bliss and woe

Haunt me with their tone,
Joy and grief in turns I know,

As I stray alone.

Stream beloved, flow on! flow on!

Ne'er can I be gay!
Thus have sport and kisses gone,

Truth thus pass'd away.

Once I seem'd the lord to be

Of that prize so fair!
Now, to our deep sorrow, we

Can forget it ne'er.

Murmur, stream, the vale along,

Never cease thy sighs;
Murmur, whisper to my song

Answering melodies!

The faery forest glimmered
Beneath an ivory moon,
The silver grasses shimmered
Against a faery tune.

Beneath the silken silence
The crystal branches slept,
And dreaming thro’ the dew-fall
The cold white blossoms wept.