Nature

The gallant Youth, who may have gained,
Or seeks, a “winsome Marrow,”
Was but an Infant in the lap
When first I looked on Yarrow;
Once more, by Newark’s Castle-gate
Long left without a warder,
I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee,
Great Minstrel of the Border!

Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day,
Their dignity installing
In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves
Were on the bough, or falling;
But breezes played, and sunshine gleamed
The forest to embolden;
Reddened the fiery hues, and shot
Transparence through the golden.

For busy thoughts the Stream flowed on
In foamy agitation;
And slept in many a crystal pool
For quiet contemplation:
No public and no private care
The freeborn mind enthralling,
We made a day of...

BOOK I

With what attractive charms this goodly frame
Of Nature touches the consenting hearts
Of mortal men; and what the pleasing stores
Which beauteous imitation thence derives
To deck the poet's, or the painter's toil;
My verse unfolds. Attend, ye gentle pow'rs
Of musical delight! and while I sing
Your gifts, your honours, dance around my strain.
Thou, smiling queen of every tuneful breast,
Indulgent Fancy! from the fruitful banks
Of Avon, whence thy rosy fingers cull
Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
Where Shakespeare lies, be present: and with thee
Let Fiction come, upon her vagrant wings
Wafting ten thousand colours through the air,
Which, by the glances of her magic eye,
She blends and shifts at will, through countless forms,

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.


In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.


Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

First in these fields I try the sylvan strains,
Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful plains:
Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring,
While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing;
Let vernal airs tho' trembling osiers play,
And Albion's cliffs resound the rural lay.
You, that too wise for pride, too good for pow'r,
Enjoy the glory to be great no more,
And carrying with you all the world can boast,
To all the world illustriously are lost!
O let my Muse her slender reed inspire,
Till in your native shades you tune the lyre:
So when the Nightingale to rest removes,
The Thrush may chant to the forsaken groves,
But, charm'd to silence, listens while she sings,
And all th' aerial audience clap their wings.
Soon as the flocks shook off the nightly dews,
Tw...

I.

There's a something in the atmosphere, in sweet September days,
That mantles all the landscape with its languid, dreamy haze;
And you see the leaves a-dropping, in a lazy kind of way,
Where the maple trees are standing in their Summer-time array.


II.

There's a yellowish tinge a-creeping over Nature's emerald sheen,
And the cattle stand, half-sleeping, in the middle of the stream
Where the glassy pool is shaded by the overhanging limb,
And the pebbly bottom's glinting where the silvery minnows swim.


III.

The tasseled corn is nodding, and the crow on drowsy wing
Is sailing o'er the orchard where the ripening apples swing,
And the fleecy clouds are floating in the azure of the sky,
And the gentle breeze is sighing as it's idly w...

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold,
And trains us on to slight the new, as if it were the old:
But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply asks not why,
Too busied with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

    Now that the sun the faded charms
    Of heaven again restores,
    And gentle zephyr the sick air revives,
    And the dark shadows of the clouds
    Are put to flight,
    And birds their naked breasts confide
    Unto the wind, and the soft light,
    With new desire of love, and with new hope,
    The conscious beasts, in the deep woods,
    Amid the melting frosts, inspires;
    May not to you, poor human souls,
    Weary, and overborne with grief,
    The happy age return, which misery,
    And truth's dark torch, before its time, consumed?
    Have not the golden rays
    Of Phoebus vanished from your gaze
    Forever? Say, O gentle Spring,
    Canst thou this icy heart inspire, and melt,
    That in the bloom of youth, the frost of age ha...

    When the snow was deep on the flower-beds,
        And the sleet was caked on the brier;
    When the frost was down in the brown bulbs' heads,
        And the ways were clogged with mire;

    When the wind to syringa and bare rose-tree
        Brought the phantoms of vanished flowers,
    And the days were sorry as sorry could be,
        And Time limped cursing his fardle of hours:

    Heigho! had I not a book and the logs?
        And I swear that I wasn't mistaken,
    But I heard the frogs croaking in far-off bogs,
        And the brush-sparrow's song in the braken.

    And I strolled by paths which the Springtide knew,
        In her mossy dells, by her ferny passes,
    Where the ground was holy with flowers and dew,
        And the ins...

Well may'st thou halt and gaze with brightening eye!
The lovely Cottage in the guardian nook
Hath stirred thee deeply; with its own dear brook,
Its own small pasture, almost its own sky!
But covet not the Abode; forbear to sigh,
As many do, repining while they look;
Intruders who would tear from Nature's book
This precious leaf, with harsh impiety.
Think what the home must be if it were thine,
Even thine, though few thy wants! Roof, window, door,        
The very flowers are sacred to the Poor,
The roses to the porch which they entwine:
Yea, all, that now enchants thee, from the day
On which it should be touched, would melt away.

O Native scenes, nought to my heart clings nearer
Than you, ye Edens of my youthful hours;
Nought in this world warms my affections dearer
Than you, ye plains of white and yellow flowers;
Ye hawthorn hedge-rows, and ye woodbine bowers,
Where youth has rov'd, and still where manhood roves
The pasture-pathway 'neath the willow groves.
Ah, as my eye looks o'er those lovely scenes,
All the delights of former life beholding;
Spite of the pain, the care that intervenes,--
When lov'd remembrance is her bliss unfolding,
Picking her childish posies on your greens,--
My soul can pause o'er its distress awhile,
And Sorrow's cheek find leisure for a smile.

MUSKOKA

A stream of tender gladness,
Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies;
Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies
In mystic rings,
Where softly swings
The music of a thousand wings
That almost tones to sadness.

Midway 'twixt earth and heaven,
A bubble in the pearly air, I seem
To float upon the sapphire floor, a dream
Of clouds of snow,
Above, below,
Drift with my drifting, dim and slow,
As twilight drifts to even.

The little fern-leaf, bending
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets,
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets
With touch so fine,
The border line
The keenest vision can't define;
So perfect is the blending.

The far, fir trees that cover
The brownish hills with needles green and gold,

The sun was gone, and the moon was coming
Over the blue Connecticut hills;
The west was rosy, the east was flushed,
And over my head the swallows rushed
This way and that, with changeful wills.

I heard them twitter and watched them dart
Now together and now apart
Like dark petals blown from a tree;
The maples stamped against the west
Were black and stately and full of rest,

And the hazy orange moon grew up
And slowly changed to yellow gold
While the hills were darkened, fold on fold
To a deeper blue than a flower could hold.

Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
On the brink of a shining pool.

O Beauty, out of many a cup
You have made...

How few there are who know the pure delight,
The chaste influence, and the solace sweet,
Of walking forth to see the glorious sight,
When nature rises, with respect, to greet
The lord of day on his majestic seat,
Like some great personage of high degree,
Who cometh forth his subjects all to meet,
Like him, but yet more glorious far than he,
He comes with splendor bright, to shed o'er land and sea.

With stately, slow and solemn march he comes,
And gradually pours forth his brilliant rays,
Unheralded by sounding brass or drums,
His blazing glory on our planet plays,
And sendeth healing light thro' darken'd ways.
His undimm'd splendor maketh mortals quail,
And e'en, at times, it fiercely strikes and slays;
But then it brighteneth the cheek so pale,
Rev...

    Blossoms crimson, white, or blue,
        Purple, pink, and every hue,
    From sunny skies, to tintings drowned
        In dusky drops of dew,
    I praise you all, wherever found,
        And love you through and through; -
            But, Blossoms On The Trees,
            With your breath upon the breeze,
    There's nothing all the world around
        As half as sweet as you!

    Could the rhymer only wring
        All the sweetness to the lees
    Of all the kisses clustering
        In juicy Used-to-bes,
    To dip his rhymes therein and sing
        The blossoms on the trees, -
    "O Blossoms on the Trees,"
        He would twitter, trill and coo,
    "However sweet, such songs as these
        Are not as sweet as you...

I

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders.    Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume. -
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts, ...

Those breathing Tokens of your kind regard,
(Suspect not, Anna, that their fate is hard;
Not soon does aught to which mild fancies cling
In lonely spots, become a slighted thing;)
Those silent Inmates now no longer share,
Nor do they need, our hospitable care,
Removed in kindness from their glassy Cell
To the fresh waters of a living Well
An elfin pool so sheltered that its rest
No winds disturb; the mirror of whose breast
Is smooth as clear, save where with dimples small
A fly may settle, or a blossom fall.
'There' swims, of blazing sun and beating shower
Fearless (but how obscured!) the golden Power,
That from his bauble prison used to cast
Gleams by the richest jewel unsurpast;
And near him, darkling like a sullen Gnome,
The silver Tenant of the crysta...

    I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing
    That Nature hath, of sound, and form, and hue -
    The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew,
    The gleam and swiftness of the sea-bird's wing;
    Blueness of sea and sky, and gold of storm
        Transmuted by the sunset, and the flame
    Of autumn-colored leaves, before me came,
    And, meeting, merged to one diviner form.

    Incarnate Beauty 'twas, whose spirit thrills
    Through glaucous ocean and the greener hills,
    And in the cloud-bewildered peaks is pent.
        Like some descended star she hovered o'er,
    But as I gazed, in doubt and wonderment,
        Mine eyes were dazzled, and I saw no more.

Poems are heavenly things,
And only souls with wings
May reach them where they grow,
May pluck and bear below,
Feeding the nations thus
With food all glorious.

Verses are not of these;
They bloom on earthly trees,
Poised on a low-hung stem,
And those may gather them
Who cannot fly to where
The heavenly gardens are.

So I by devious ways
Have pulled some easy sprays
From the down-dropping bough
Which all may reach, and now
I knot them, bud and leaf,
Into a rhymed sheaf.

Not mine the pinion strong
To win the nobler song;
I only cull and bring
A hedge-row offering
Of berry, flower, and brake,
If haply some may take.