Flown to Italy from Greece, Unlock doors of new delight; And sometimes mankind I appalled With spasms of terror for balm of hope. And Dante searched the triple spheres, So shaped, so coloured, swift or still, Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur, And life was larger than before: Orbit and sum of Shakspeare's wit. Far in the North, where polar night Through snows above, mines underground, The inks of Erebus he found; Rehearsed to men the damnèd wails On which the seraph music sails. In spirit-worlds he trod alone, But walked the earth unmarked, unknown. The near by-stander caught no sound,-Yet they who listened far aloof Heard rendings of the skyey roof, In newer days of war and trade, So bloom the unfading petals five, And verses that all verse outlive. SONG OF NATURE. MINE are the night and morning, I hide in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In slumber I am strong. No numbers have counted my tallies, I sit by the shining Fount of Life, And, ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers, And many a thousand summers I wrote the past in characters And thefts from satellites and rings What time the gods kept carnival, Time and thought were my surveyors, They boiled the sea, and baked the layers But he, the man-child glorious,- My boreal lights leap upward, Must time and tide for ever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest? Too much of donning and doffing, Too slow the rainbow fades, I weary of my robe of snow, My leaves and my cascades; I tire of globes and races, Too long the game is played; What without him is summer's pomp, Or winter's frozen shade? I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate. Twice I have moulded an image, And thrice outstretched my hand; Made one of day, and one of night, And one of the salt sea-sand. One in a Judean manger, And one by Avon stream, I moulded kings and saviours, Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain. Let war and trade and creeds and song The sunburnt world a man shall breed No ray is dimmed, no atom worn; Gives back the bending heavens in dew. TWO RIVERS. THY summer voice, Musketaquit, Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain. Thou in thy narrow banks art pent: I see the inundation sweet, I hear the spending of the stream Through years, through men, through nature fleet, Through passion, thought, through power and dream. Musketaquit, a goblin strong, Of shard and flint makes jewels gay; They lose their grief who hear his song, And where he winds is the day of day. So forth and brighter fares my stream,- TERMINUS. It is time to be old, To take in sail: The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: "No more! No farther spread Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; |