Nature

THE MAIDEN.

I'VE seen him before me!
What rapture steals o'er me!

Oh heavenly sight!
He's coming to meet me;
Perplex'd, I retreat me,

With shame take to flight.
My mind seems to wander!
Ye rocks and trees yonder,

Conceal ye my rapture.

Conceal my delight!

THE YOUTH.

'Tis here I must find her,
'Twas here she enshrined her,

Here vanish'd from sight.
She came, as to meet me,
Then fearing to greet me,

With shame took to flight.
Is't hope? Do I wander?
Ye rocks and trees yonder,

Disclose ye the loved one,

Disclose my delight!

THE LANGUISHING.

O'er my sad, fate I sorrow,
To each dewy morrow,

Veil'd here from man's sight
By the many mi...

[1]

From home and city spires, one day,
The swallow Progne flew away,
And sought the bosky dell
Where sang poor Philomel.[2]
'My sister,' Progne said, 'how do you do?
'Tis now a thousand years since you
Have been conceal'd from human view;
I'm sure I have not seen your face
Once since the times of Thrace.
Pray, will you never quit this dull retreat?'
'Where could I find,' said Philomel, 'so sweet?'
'What! sweet?' cried Progne - 'sweet to waste
Such tones on beasts devoid of taste,
Or on some rustic, at the most!
Should you by deserts be engross'd?
Come, be the city's pride and boast.
Besides, the woods remind of harms
That Tereus in them did your charms.'
'Alas!' replied the bird of song,
'The thought of that so ...

As sunbeams stream through liberal space
And nothing jostle or displace,
So waved the pine-tree through my thought
And fanned the dreams it never brought.

'Whether is better, the gift or the donor?
Come to me,'
Quoth the pine-tree,
'I am the giver of honor.
My garden is the cloven rock,
And my manure the snow;
And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,
In summer's scorching glow.
He is great who can live by me:
The rough and bearded forester
Is better than the lord;
God fills the script and canister,
Sin piles the loaded board.
The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant the lord that shall be;
The lord is hay, the peasant grass,
One dry, and one the living tree.
Who liveth by the ragged pine
Founde...

        I pass a cobbler's shop along the street
            And pause a moment at the door-step, where,
        In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,
            The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,
            Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year,
        And twitter where the autumn hedges run,
        Join all the months of music into one.

        I shut my eyes:    the shy wood-thrush is there,
            And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell;
        Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhere
            A bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell;
            From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell;
        And when the oriole sets his full heart free
        Barefooted boyhood comes again to me.

      ...

Head in hand, I look at the paper leaf;
It is still white.

I look at the ink
Dry on the end of my brush.

My soul sleeps.
Will it ever wake?

I walk a little in the pouring of the sun
And pass my hands over the higher flowers.

There is the soft green forest,
There are the sweet lines of the mountains
Carved with snow, red in the sunlight.

I see the slow march of the clouds,
I hear the crows jeering, and I come back

To sit and look at the paper leaf,
Which is still white
Under my brush.

From the Chinese of Chang-Chi (770-850).

O even-handed Nature! we confess
This life that men so honor, love, and bless
Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less.

We count the precious seasons that remain;
Strike not the level of the golden grain,
But heap it high with years, that earth may gain.

What heaven can lose, - for heaven is rich in song
Do not all poets, dying, still prolong
Their broken chants amid the seraph throng,

Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen,
And England's heavenly minstrel sits between
The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine?

This was the first sweet singer in the cage
Of our close-woven life. A new-born age
Claims in his vesper song its heritage.

Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's desire!
Moloch, who calls our children through the ...

When blood-root blooms and trillium flowers
Unclasp their stars to sun and rain,
My heart strikes hands with winds and showers
And wanders in the woods again.

O urging impulse, born of spring,
That makes glad April of my soul,
No bird, however wild of wing,
Is more impatient of control.

Impetuous of pulse it beats
Within my blood and bears me hence;
Above the housetops and the streets
I hear its happy eloquence.

It tells me all that I would know,
Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees;
I seem to hear the blossoms blow,
And leaves unfolding on the trees.

I seem to hear the blue-bells ring
Faint purple peals of fragrance; and
The honey-throated poppies fling
Their golden laughter o'er the land.

It calls to me; it ...

Oft let me wander hand in hand with Thought,
In woodland paths, and lone sequester'd shades,
What time the sunny banks and mossy glades,
With dewy wreaths of early violets wrought,
Into the air their fragrant incense fling,
To greet the triumph of the youthful Spring.
Lo, where she comes! 'scaped from the icy lair
Of hoary Winter; wanton, free, and fair!
Now smile the heavens again upon the earth,
Bright hill, and bosky dell, resound with mirth,
And voices, full of laughter and wild glee,
Shout through the air pregnant with harmony;
And wake poor sobbing Echo, who replies
With sleepy voice, that softly, slowly dies.

Willie.

Roget, droop not, see the spring
Is the earth enamelling,
And the birds on every tree
Greet this morn with melody:
Hark, how yonder thrustle chants it,
And her mate as proudly vants it
See how every stream is dress'd
By her margin with the best
Of Flora's gifts; she seems glad
For such brooks such flow'rs she had.
All the trees are quaintly tired
With green buds, of all desired;
And the hawthorn every day
Spreads some little show of May:
See the primrose sweetly set
By the much-lov'd violet,
All the banks do sweetly cover,
As they would invite a lover
With his lass to see their dressing
And to grace them by their pressing:
Yet in all this merry tide
When all cares are laid aside,
Roget sits as if his bloo...

To A. C.



Not to the staring Day,
For all the importunate questionings he pursues
In his big, violent voice,
Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,
The Trees - God's sentinels
Over His gift of live, life-giving air,
Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.
Midsummer-manifold, each one
Voluminous, a labyrinth of life,
They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams
That haunt their leafier privacies,
Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still
With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile
Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade,
And disappearances of homing birds,
And frolicsome freaks
Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.

But at the word
Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night,
Night of the m...

Fresh from the Hall of Bounty sprung, [1]
With glowing heart and ardent eye,
With song and rhyme upon my tongue,
And fairy visions dancing by,
The mid-day sun in all his pow'r
The backward valley painted gay;
Mine was a road without a flower,
Where one small streamlet cross'd the way.

[Footnote 1: On a sultry afternoon, late in the summer of 1802, Euston-Hall lay in my way to Thetford, which place I did not reach until the evening, on a visit to my sister: the lines lose much of their interest except they could be read on the spot, or at least at a coresponding season of the year.]

What was it rous'd my soul to love?
What made the simple brook so dear?
It glided like the weary dove,
And never brook seem'd half so clear.
Cool pass'd the current o'er my feet,
...

From out the hills, where twilight stands,
Above the shadowy pasture lands,
With strained and strident cry
Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,
The bull-bats fly.

A cloud hands over, strange of shape,
And, colored like the half-ripe grape,
Seems some uneven stain
On heaven's azure, thin as crape
And blue as rain.

By ways, that sunset's sardonyx
O'erflares, and gates the farmboy clicks,
Through which the cattle came,
The mullein stalks seem giant wicks
Of downy flame.

From woods no glimmer enters in,
Above the streams that wandering win
From out the violet hills,
Those haunters of the dusk begin,
The whippoorwills.

Adown the dark the firefly marks
Its flight in golden-emerald sparks;
And, loosened from this...

Friend of my early days, we meet once more!
Once more I stand thine aged boughs beneath,
And hear again the rustling music pour,
Along thy leaves, as whispering spirits breathe.

Full many a day of sunshine and of storm,
Since last we parted, both have surely known;
Thy leaves are thinned, decrepit is thy form,
And all my cherished visions, they are flown!

How beautiful, how brief, those sunny hours
Departed now, when life was in its spring
When Fancy knew no scene undecked with flowers,
And Expectation flew on Fancy's wing!

Here, on the bank, beside this whispering stream,
Which still runs by as gayly as of yore,
Marking its eddies, I was wont to dream
Of things away, on some far fairy shore.

Then every whirling leaf and bubbling ball,<...

The radiant ruler of the year
At length his wintry goal attains;
Soon to reverse the long career,
And northward bend his steady reins.
Now, piercing half Potosi's height,
Prone rush the fiery floods of light
Ripening the mountain's silver stores:
While, in some cavern's horrid shade,
The panting Indian hides his head,
And oft the approach of eve implores.
But lo, on this deserted coast
How pale the sun! how thick the air!
Mustering his storms, a sordid host,
Lo, winter desolates the year,
The fields resign their latest bloom;
No more the breezes waft perfume,
No more the streams in music roll:
But snows fall dark, or rains resound;
And, while great nature mourns around,
Her griefs infect the human soul.
Hence the loud city's busy throngs

I do not see the hills around,
Nor mark the tints the copses wear;
I do not note the grassy ground
And constellated daisies there.

I hear not the contralto note
Of cuckoos hid on either hand,
The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat
When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree, and mead -
All eloquent of love divine -
Receives their constant careful heed:
Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear,
The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,
Are those far back ones missed when near,
And now perceived too late by me!

The shade for me, but over thee
The lingering sunshine still;
As, smiling, to the silent stream
Comes down the singing rill.

So come to me, my little one,
My years with thee I share,
And mingle with a sister's love
A mother's tender care.

But keep the smile upon thy lip,
The trust upon thy brow;
Since for the dear one God hath called
We have an angel now.

Our mother from the fields of heaven
Shall still her ear incline;
Nor need we fear her human love
Is less for love divine.

The songs are sweet they sing beneath
The trees of life so fair,
But sweetest of the songs of heaven
Shall be her children's prayer.

Then, darling, rest upon my breast,
And teach my heart to lean
With thy sweet trust upon the arm...

Tune - "Saw ye my father?"



I.

    Where are the joys I have met in the morning,
        That danc'd to the lark's early song?
    Where is the peace that awaited my wand'ring,
        At evening the wild woods among?

II.

    No more a-winding the course of yon river,
        And marking sweet flow'rets so fair:
    No more I trace the light footsteps of pleasure,
        But sorrow and sad sighing care.

III.

    Is it that summer's forsaken our valleys,
        And grim, surly winter is near?
    No, no, the bees' humming round the gay roses,
        Proclaim it the pride of the year.

IV.

    Fain would I hide, what I fear to discover,
        Yet long, long too well have I known,

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.