Say, did you give thrilling transport way,
Did your eye brighten, when young lambs at play
Leaped o'er your path with animated pride,
Or gazed in merry clusters by your side?
Ye who can smile-to wisdom no disgrace-
At the arch meaning of a kitten's face;
If spotless innocence and infant mirth
Excites to praise, or gives reflection birth;
In shades like these pursue your favorite joy,
Midst nature's revels, sports that never cloy.
A few begin a short but vigorous race,
And indolence, abashed, soon flies the place:
Thus challenged forth, see thither, one by one,
From every side, assembling playmates run;
A thousand wily antics mark their stay,
A starting crowd, impatient of delay:
Like the fond dove from fearful prison freed,
Each seems to say, Come, let us try our speed;"
Away they scour, impetuous, ardent, strong,
The green turf trembling as they bound along,
Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb,
Where every mole-hill is a bed of thyme,
Then, panting, stop; yet scarcely can refrain,-
A bird, a leaf, will set them off again;
Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow,
Scattering the wild brier roses into snow,
Their little limbs increasing efforts try;
Like the torn flower, the fair assemblage fly.
Ah, fallen rose! sad emblem of their doom;
Frail as thyself, they perish while they bloom!
-Robert Bloomfield.
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day-
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Returned this day, the south wind searches,
And finds young pines and budding birches;
But finds not the budding man;
Nature, who lost him, cannot remake him;
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;
Nature, Fate, Men, him seek in vain.
And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,
Oh, whither tend thy feet?
I had the right, few days ago,
Thy steps to watch, thy place to know;
How have I forfeited the right?
Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?
I hearken for thy household cheer,
O eloquent child!
Whose voice, an equal messenger,
Conveyed thy meaning mild.
What though the pains and joys
Whereof it spoke were toys
Fitting his age and ken,
Yet fairest dames and bearded men,
Who heard the sweet request,
So gentle, wise and grave,
Bended with joy to his behest,
And let the world's affairs go by,
Awhile to share his cordial game,
Or mend his wicker wagon frame,
Still plotting how their hungry ear
That winsome voice again might hear
For his lips could well pronounce
Words that were persuasions.
Gentlest guardians marked serene
His early hope, his liberal mien;
Took counsel from his guiding eyes
To make this wisdom earthly wise.
Ah, vainly do these eyes recall
The school march, each day's festival,
When every morn my bosom glowed
To watch the convoy on the road;
The babe in willow wagon closed,
With rolling eyes and face composed;
With children forward and behind
Like Cupids studiously inclined;
And he, the chieftain, paced beside,
The center of the troop allied,
With sunny face of sweet repose,
To guard the babe from fancied foes
The little captain innocent
Took the eye with him as he went;
Each village senior paused to scan
And speak the lovely caravan.
From the window I look out
To mark thy beautiful parade,
Stately marching in cap and coat
To some tune by fairies played;
A music, heard by thee alone,
To works as noble led thee on.
Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain,
Up and down their glances strain.
The painted sled stands where it stood;
The kennel by the corded wood;
The gathered sticks to stanch the wall
Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall;
The ominous hole he dug in the sand,
And childhood s castle built or planned:
His daily haunts I well discern—
The poultry yard, the shed, the barn
And every inch of garden ground
Paced by the blessed feet around
From the roadside to the brook
Whereinto he loved to look.
Step the meek birds where erst they ranged
The wintry garden lies unchanged:
The brook into the stream runs on;
But the deep-eyed boy is gone.
Dark with more clouds than tempests are,
When thou didst yield thy innocent breath
In birdlike heavings unto death,
Night came, and Nature had not thee;
I said: "We are mates in misery."
The morrow dawned with needless glow;
Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow;
Each tramper started; but the feet
Of the most beautiful and sweet
Of human youth had left the hill
And garden-they were bound and still.
There's not a sparrow or a wren,
There's not a blade of Autumn grain,
Which the four seasons do not tend,
And tides of life and increase lend;
And every chick of every bird
And weed and rock-moss is preferred.
Oh, ostrich-like forgetfulnes!
Oh, loss of larger in the less!
Was there no star that could be sent,
No watcher in the firmament,
No angel from the countless host That loiters round the crystal coast, Could stoop to heal that only child, Nature's sweet marvel undefiled, And keep the blossoms of the earth, Which all her harvests were not worth? Not mine I never called thee mine, But Nature's heir-if I repine, And seeing rashly torn and moved Not what I made but what I loved, Grew early old with grief that thou Must to the wastes of Nature go'Tis because a general hope
Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope.
For flattering planets seemed to say
This child should ills of ages stay,
By wondrous tongue, and guided pen,
Bring the flown Muses back to men.
Perchance not he, but Nature, ailed;
The world, and not the infant, failed.
It was not ripe yet to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own:
And pregnant with his grander thought
Brought the old order into doubt.
His beauty once their beauty tried;
They could not feed him and he died,
And wandered backward as in scorn,
To wait an aon to be born.
Ill day which made this beauty waste,
Plight broken, this high face defaced!
Some went and came about the dead;
And some in books of solace read;
Some to their friends the tidings say;
Some went to write, some went to pray:
One tarried here, there hurried one:
But their heart abode with none.
Covetous Death bereaved us a"
The eager fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me.
For this losing is true dying;
This is lordly man's down-lying,
This his slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.
O child of Paradise,
Boy who made dear his father's home,
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come,
I am too much bereft.
The world dishonored thou hast left, Oh, truth's and nature's costly lie! Oh, trusted broken prophecy!
Oh, richest fortune sourly crossed! Born for the future, to the future lost!
The deep Heart answered: "Weepest thou? Worthier cause for passion wild
If I had not taken the child.
And deemest thou as those who pore,
With aged eyes, short way before-
Think'st beauty vanished from the coast
Of matter, and thy darling lost!
Taught he not thee-the man of eld,
Whose eyes within his eyes beheld
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to man?
To be alone wilt thou begin
When worlds of lovers hem thee in?
To-morrow when the mask shall fall
That dizen Nature's carnival,
The pure shall see by their own will,
Which overflowing love shall fill,
'Tis not within the force of fate
The fate-conjoined to separate.
But thou, my votary, weepest thou?
I gave thee sight-where is it now?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, bible, or of speech;
Wrote in thy mind's transparent table,
As far as the incommunicable;
Taught thee each private sign to raise,
Lit by the super-solar blaze.
Past utterance, and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of Nature's heart;
And though no Muse can these impart,
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
"I came to thee as to a friend;
Dearest, to thee I did not send
Tutors, but a joyful eye,
Innocence that matched the sky,
Lovely locks, a form of wonder,
Laughter rich as woodland thunder,
That thou might'st entertain apart
The richest flowering of all art;
And, as the great all-loving Day
Through smallest chambers takes its way,
That thou might'st break thy daily bread
With prophet, savior, and head;
That thou might'st cherish for thine own
Tke riches of sweet Mary's son,
Boy-rabbi, Israel's paragon.
And thoughtest thou that such guest
Would in thy hall take up his rest?
Would rushing life forget her laws,
Fate's glowing revolution pause?
High omen's ask diviner guess,
Not to be conned to tediousness.
And know my higher gifts unbind
The zone that girds the incarnate mind.
When the scanty shores are full
With Thought's perilous, whirling.pool;
When frail Nature can no more,
Then the Spirit strikes the hour:
My servant Death, with solving rite,
Pours finite into infinite.
"Wilt thou freeze Love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through Nature circling go?
Nail the wild star to its track
On the half-climbed zodiac?
Light is light which radiates;
Blood is blood which circulates;
Life is life which generates;
And many-seeming life is one-
Wilt thou transfix and make it none?
"Its onward force too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament?
Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,
Talker! the unreplying Fate ?
Nor see the genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,
Beckon it when to go and come,
Self-announced its hour of doom?
Fair the soul's recess and shrine,
Magic-built to last a season;
Masterpiece of love benign;
Fairer than expansive reason,
Whose omen 'tis, and sign.
Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show?
Verdicts which accumulate
From lengthening scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned-
Saying: What is excellent?
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Hearts' love will meet thee again.
Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye
Up to his style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and gold
Built he heaven stark and cold;
No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass, and scented weeds:
Or like a traveler's fleeing tent,
Or bow above the tempest bent;
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And virtue reaching to its aims;
Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems stili restored,
Broad-sowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson.
ARK, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus' gind arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes; With everything that pretty bin, My lady sweet, arise;
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