This little rill, that from the springs
Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the slope a while, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet, when life was new,
When woods in early green were dressed,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play,
List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn,
And crop the violet on its brim,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.

And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,
Duly I sought thy banks, and tried
My first rude numbers by thy side.
Words cannot tell how br...

O'Er field and plain, in childhood's artless days,

Thou sprang'st with me, on many a spring-morn fair.

"For such a daughter, with what pleasing care,
Would I, as father, happy dwellings raise!"

And when thou on the world didst cast thy gaze,

Thy joy was then in household toils to share.

"Why did I trust her, why she trust me e'er?
For such a sister, how I Heaven should praise!"

Nothing can now the beauteous growth retard;

Love's glowing flame within my breast is fann'd.

Shall I embrace her form, my grief to end?

Thee as a queen must I, alas, regard:

So high above me placed thou seem'st to stand;

Before a passing look I meekly bend.

A Sense of sadness in the golden air,
A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
Seeing her loveliness reflected there,
Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.

A breathlessness, a feeling as of fear,
Holy and dim as of a mystery near,
As if the World about us listening went,
With lifted finger, and hand-hollowed ear,
Hearkening a music that we cannot hear,
Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.

A prescience of the soul that has no name,
Expectancy that is both wild and tame,
As if the Earth, from out its azure ring
Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,
As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,
The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.

It pleased her to step in front and sit
Where the cragged slope was green,
While I stood back that I might pencil it
With her amid the scene;
Till it gloomed and rained;
But I kept on, despite the drifting wet
That fell and stained
My draught, leaving for curious quizzings yet
The blots engrained.

And thus I drew her there alone,
Seated amid the gauze
Of moisture, hooded, only her outline shown,
With rainfall marked across.
- Soon passed our stay;
Yet her rainy form is the Genius still of the spot,
Immutable, yea,
Though the place now knows her no more, and has known her not
Ever since that day.

From an old note.

I

An age hath been when Earth was proud
Of lustre too intense
To be sustained; and Mortals bowed
The front in self-defence.
Who 'then', if Dian's crescent gleamed,
Or Cupid's sparkling arrow streamed
While on the wing the Urchin played,
Could fearlessly approach the shade?
Enough for one soft vernal day,
If I, a bard of ebbing time,
And nurtured in a fickle clime,
May haunt this horned bay;
Whose amorous water multiplies
The flitting halcyon's vivid dyes;
And smooths her liquid breast to show
These swan-like specks of mountain snow,
White as the pair that slid along the plains
Of heaven, when Venus held the reins!

II

In youth we love the darksome lawn
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then, Twilight is preferred to Da...

Come, spread your wings, as I spread mine,
And leave the crowded hall
For where the eyes of twilight shine
O'er evening's western wall.

These are the pleasant Berkshire hills,
Each with its leafy crown;
Hark! from their sides a thousand rills
Come singing sweetly down.

A thousand rills; they leap and shine,
Strained through the shadowy nooks,
Till, clasped in many a gathering twine,
They swell a hundred brooks.

A hundred brooks, and still they run
With ripple, shade, and gleam,
Till, clustering all their braids in one,
They flow a single stream.

A bracelet spun from mountain mist,
A silvery sash unwound,
With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist
It writhes to reach the Sound.

This is my bark, - a pygmy's ship;
B...

This is the maiden Solitude, too fair
For mortal eyes to gaze on, she who dwells
In the lone valley where the water wells
Clear from the marble, where the mountain air
Is resinous with pines, and white peaks bare
Their unpolluted bosoms to the stars,
And holy Reverence the passage bars
To meaner souls who seek to enter there;
Only the worshipper at Nature's shrine
May find that maiden waiting to be won,
With broad calm brow and meek eyes of the dove,
May drink the rarer ether all divine,
And, earthly toils and earthly troubles done,
May win the longed-for sweetness of her love.

In Fancy's eye, what an extended span,
Time, hoary herald, has been stretch'd by thee:
Vain to conceive where thy dark burst began,
Thou birthless, boundless, vast immensity!
Vain all conceptions of weak-minded man
Thee to unravel from thy mystery!--
In mortal wisdom, thou'st already ran
A circled travel of eternity;
Still, but a moment of thy mighty plan
Seems yet unwound, from what thy age shall see,
Consuming Tyrant of all mortal kind!--
And what thou art, and what thou art to be,
Is known to none, but that Immortal Mind
Who reigns alone superior to thee.

    "Robert Barnes, fellow fine,
    Can you shoe this horse of mine?"
    "Yes, good sir, that I can,
    As well as any other man:
    There's a nail, and there's a prod,
    And now, good sir, your horse is shod."

There's a space for good to bloom in
Every heart of man or woman, -
And however wild or human,
Or however brimmed with gall,
Never heart may beat without it;
And the darkest heart to doubt it
Has something good about it
            After all.

And what of home, how goes it, boys,
While we die here in stench and noise?
"The hill stands up and hedges wind
Over the crest and drop behind;
Here swallows dip and wild things go
On peaceful errands to and fro
Across the sloping meadow floor,
And make no guess at blasting war.
In woods that fledge the round hill-shoulder
Leaves shoot and open, fall and moulder,
And shoot again.    Meadows yet show
Alternate white of drifted snow
And daisies.    Children play at shop,
Warm days, on the flat boulder-top,
With wildflower coinage, and the wares
Are bits of glass and unripe pears.
Crows perch upon the backs of sheep,
The wheat goes yellow:    women reap,
Autumn winds ruffle brook and pond,
Flutter the hedge and fly beyond.
So the first things ...

    Small is the new-born plant scarce seen
    Amid the soft encircling green,
        Where yonder budding acorn rears,
    Just o'er the waving grass, its tender head:
        Slow pass along the train of years,
    And on the growing plant, their dews and showers they shed.
        Anon it rears aloft its giant form,
        And spreads its broad-brown arms to meet the storm.
    Beneath its boughs far shadowing o'er the plain,
From summer suns, repair the grateful village train.

        Nor BEDFORD will my friend survey
    The book of Nature with unheeding eye;
        For never beams the rising orb of day,
        For never dimly dies the refluent ray,
    But as the moralizer marks the sky,
He broods with strange delight upon futurity.

    ...

I do not know what truth the false untruth
Of this sad sense of the seen world may own,
Or if this flowered plant bears also a fruit
Unto the true reality unknown.
But as the rainbow, neither earth's nor sky's,
Stands in the dripping freshness of lulled rain,
A hope, not real yet not fancy's, lies
Athwart the moment of our ceasing pain.
Somehow, since pain is felt yet felt as ill,
Hope hath a better warrant than being hoped;
Since pain is felt as aught we should not feel
Man hath a Nature's reason for having groped,
    Since Time was Time and age and grief his measures,
    Towards a better shelter than Time's pleasures.

Why each is striving, from of old,
To love more deeply than he can?
Still would be true, yet still grows cold?
Ask of the Powers that sport with man!

They yok’d in him, for endless strife,
A heart of ice, a soul of fire;
And hurl’d him on the Field of Life,
An aimless unallay’d Desire.

Amor, Natura, e la bell' alma umile.

DURING A SERIOUS ILLNESS OF LAURA.


    Love, Nature, Laura's gentle self combines,
She where each lofty virtue dwells and reigns,
Against my peace: To pierce with mortal pains
Love toils--such ever are his stern designs.
Nature by bonds so slight to earth confines
Her slender form, a breath may break its chains;
And she, so much her heart the world disdains,
Longer to tread life's wearying round repines.
Hence still in her sweet frame we view decay
All that to earth can joy and radiance lend,
Or serve as mirror to this laggard age;
And Death's dread purpose should not Pity stay,
Too well I see where all those hopes must end,
With which I fondly soothed my lingering pilgrimage.

WRANGHAM.
<...

First-born of the creating Voice!
Minister of God's spirit, who wast sent
To wait upon Him first, what time He went
Moving about 'mid the tumultuous noise
Of each unpiloted element
Upon the face of the void formless deep!
Thou who didst come unbodied and alone,
Ere yet the sun was set his rule to keep,
Or ever the moon shone,
Or e'er the wandering star-flocks forth were driven!
Thou garment of the Invisible, whose skirt
Falleth on all things from the lofty heaven!
Thou Comforter, be with me as thou wert
When first I longed for words, to be
A radiant garment for my thought, like thee.

We lay us down in sorrow,
Wrapt in the old mantle of our mother Night;
In vexing dreams we 'strive until the morrow;
Grief lifts our eyelids up--and lo, the light!...

    Pitty Patty Polt,
    Shoe the wild colt!
            Here a nail;
            And there a nail;
    Pitty Patty Polt.

Margaret. Faust.

MARGARET.

DOST thou believe in God?

FAUST.


            Doth mortal live

Who dares to say that he believes in God?
Go, bid the priest a truthful answer give,

Go, ask the wisest who on earth e'er trod,
Their answer will appear to be
Given alone in mockery.

MARGARET.

Then thou dost not believe? This sayest thou?

FAUST.

Sweet love, mistake not what I utter now!
Who knows His name?
Who dares proclaim:
Him I believe?
Who so can feel
His heart to steel
To sari believe Him not?
The All-Embracer,
The All-Sustained,
Holds and sustains He not
Thee, me, Himself?

Hang not the heavens their arch overhead?
Lies not the earth beneath us, firm?<...