Refresh the faded tints,

Recut the aged prints,

And write my old adventures with the pen Which on the first day drew,

Upon the tablets blue,

The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.

THE HARP.

ONE musician is sure,
His wisdom will not fail,
He has not tasted wine impure,
Nor bent to passion frail.
Age cannot cloud his memory,
Nor grief untune his voice,
Ranging down the ruled scale
From tone of joy to inward wail,
Tempering the pitch of all
In his windy cave.

He all the fables knows,
And in their causes tells,--
Knows Nature's rarest moods,
Ever on her secret broods.
The Muse of men is coy,
Oft courted will not come ;
In palaces and market-squares
Entreated, she is dumb;"

But my minstrel knows and tells
The counsel of the gods,
Knows of Holy Book the spells,
Knows the law of Night and Day,
And the heart of girl and boy,
The tragic and the gay,

And what is writ on Table Round
Of Arthur and his peers,

What sea and land discoursing say
In sidereal years.

He renders all his lore
In numbers wild as dreams,
Modulating all extremes,-
What the spangled meadow saith
To the children who have faith;
Only to children children sing,
Only to youth will spring be spring.

Who is the Bard thus magnified? When did he sing? and where abide?

Chief of song where poets feast In the wind-harp which thou seest In the casement at my side.

Æolian harp,

How strangely wise thy strain!
Gay for youth, gay for youth,
(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)
In the hall at summer eve

Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.
From the eager opening strings

Rung loud and bold the song.

Who but loved the wind-harp's note?
How should not the poet dote
On its mystic tongue,

With its primeval memory,
Reporting what old minstrels told
Of Merlin locked the harp within,→
Merlin paying the pain of sin,
Pent in a dungeon made of air,-
And some attain his voice to hear,
Words of pain and cries of fear,

But pillowed all on melody,

As fits the griefs of bards to be.
And what if that all-echoing shell,
Which thus the buried Past can tell,
Should rive the Future, and reveal
What his dread folds would fain conceal?
It shares the secret of the earth,
And of the kinds that owe her birth.
Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
But of the Overgods alone :

It trembles to the cosmic breath,-
As it heareth, so it saith;

Obeying meek the primal Cause,
It is the tongue of mundane laws.
And this, at least, I dare affirm.
Since genius too has bound and term,
There is no bard in all the choir,
Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,

Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,
Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
Scott, the delight of generous boys,

Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,-
Not one of all can put in verse,
Or to this presence could rehearse,
The sights and voices ravishing
The boy knew on the hills in spring,
When pacing through the oaks he heard
Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
The heavy grouse's sudden whir,
The rattle of the kingfisher;
Saw bonfires of the harlot flies
In the lowland, when day dies;
Or marked, benighted and forlorn,
The first far signal-fire of morn.
These syllables that Nature spoke,
And the thoughts that in him woke,
Can adequately utter none

Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
Therein I hear the Parcæ reel

The threads of man at their humming-wheel,
The threads of life, and power, and pain,
So sweet and mournful falls the strain.
And best can teach its Delphian chord
How Nature to the soul is moored,
If once again that silent string,

As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.

Not long ago, at eventide,

It seemed, so listening, at my side
A window rose, and, to say sooth,
I looked forth on the fields of youth:
I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
I knew their forms in fancy weeds,
Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
Mates of my youth,-yet not my mates,
Stronger and bolder far than I,

With grace, with genius, well attired,
And then as now from far admired,
Followed with love

They knew not of,

With passion cold and shy.

O joy, for what recoveries rare!
Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,

See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,-
Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!
Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil
Of life resurgent from the soil
Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.

APRIL.

THE April winds are magical,
And thrill our tuneful framies;
The garden-walks are passional
To batchelors and dames.

The hedge is gemmed with diamonds
The air with Cupids full,

The clews of fairy Rosamonds
Guide lovers to the pool.
Each dimple in the water,
Each leaf that shades the rock,
Can cozen, pique, and flatter,
Can parley and provoke.
Goodfellow, Puck, and goblins
Know more than any book;
Down with your doleful problems,
And court the sunny brook.

The south-winds are quick-witted,
The schools are sad and slow,
The masters quite omitted
The lore we care to know.

WOODNOTES I.

I.

WHEN the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
Who speeds to the woodland walks!
To birds and trees who talks ?
Cæsar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.
He goes to the river-side,--
Not hook nor line hath he;
He stands in the meadows wide,-
Nor gun nor scythe to see:
Sure some god his eye enchants;
What he knows nobody wants.
In the wood he travels glad,
Without better fortune had,
Melancholy without bad.
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest:

Pondering shadows, colours, clouds,
Grass-buds, and caterpillar-shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet's petal,
Why Nature loves the number five,
And why the star-form she repeats :
Lover of all things alive,
Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself.
Who can tell him what he is?
Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities?

2.

And such I knew, a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
A lover true, who knew by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart;

It seemed that Nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place,
In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields known to bird and fox,
But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long-descended race.

It seemed as if the breezes brought him;
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;
As if by secret sight he knew

Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.
Many haps fall in the field
Seldom seen by wishful eyes,

But all her shows did Nature yield,
To please and win this pilgrim wise.

He saw the partridge drum in the woods;
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
He found the tawny thrushes' broods;
And the shy hawk did wait for him;
What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was showed to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come.

3.

'Twas one of the charméd days,
When the genius of God doth flow,
The wind may alter twenty ways,
A tempest cannot blow;

It may blow north, it still is warm ;
Or south, it still is clear;

Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;
Or west, no thunder fear.

The musing peasant lowly great
Beside the forest water sate;

The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown
Composed the network of his throne;

The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,
Was burnished to a floor of glass,
Painted with shadows green and proud
Of the tree and of the cloud.

He was the heart of all the scene;
On him the sun looked more serene;
To hill and cloud his face was known,-
It seemed the likeness of their own;
They knew by sacred sympathy
The public child of earth and sky.
'You ask,' he said, 'what guide
Me through trackless thickets led,

Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide?'

I found the water's bed.

The water-courses were my guide,
I travelled grateful by their side,

Or through their channel dry;

They led me through the thickest damp,
Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp,
Through beds of granite cut my road,
And their resistless friendship showed:
The falling waters led me,
The foodful waters fed me,

And brought me to the lowest land,
Unerring to the ocean sand.

The moss upon the forest bark

Was polestar when the night was dark;
The purple berries in the wood
Supplied me necessary food;
For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.

When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
'Twill be time enough to die;
Then will yet my mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field,
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.

WOODNOTES.

II.

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 honour.
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 scrip 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
Foundeth a heroic line;
Who liveth in the palace hall
Waneth fast and spendeth all.
He goes to my savage haunts,
With his chariot and his care;
My twilight realm he disenchants,
And finds his prison there.

'What prizes the town and the tower?
Only what the pine-tree yields;
Sinew that subdued the fields;
The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods
Chants his hymn to hills and floods,
Whom the city's poisoning spleen
Made not pale, or fat, or lean;
Whose iron arms, and iron mould,
Know not fear, fatigue, or cold.
I give my rafters to his boat,
My billets to his boiler's throat;
And I will swim the ancient sea,
To float my child to victory,
And grant to dwellers with the pine
Dominion o'er the palm and vine.

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
Cut a bough from my parent stem,
And dip it in thy porcelain vase;
A little while each russet gem

Will swell and rise with wonted grace:
But when it seeks enlarged supplies,
The orphan of the forest dies.
Whoso walks in solitude,

And inhabiteth the wood,

Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,

Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass

From these companions, power and grace;
Clean shall he be, without, within,
From the old adhering sin,
All ill dissolving in the light
Of his triumphant piercing sight.
Not vain, sour, nor frivolous;
Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous;

Grave, chaste, contented, though retired,
And of all other men desired.
On him the light of star and moon
Shall fall with purer radiance down;
All constellations of the sky
Shed their virtue through his eye.
Him Nature giveth for defence
His formidable innocence;

The mounting sap, the shells, the sea,

All spheres, all stones, his helpers be;
He shall never be old;

Nor his fate shall be foretold;
He shall meet the speeding year,
Without wailing, without fear;
He shall be happy in his love,
Like to like shall joyful prove;
He shall be happy whilst he wooes
Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.
But if with gold she bind her hair,
And deck her breast with diamond,
Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear,
Though thou lie alone on the ground.

'Heed the old oracles,
Ponder my spells;

Song wakes in my pinnacles
When the wind swells.

Soundeth the prophetic wind,

The shadows shake on the rock behind,

And the countless leaves of the pine are strings Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.

Hearken! Hearken!

If thou wouldst know the mystic song
Chanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, abroad, the pæan swells;

O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells?

O wise man! hear'st thou the least part?
'Tis the chronicle of art.

To the open air it sings
Sweet the genesis of things,

Of tendency through endless ages,
Of star-dust, and star pilgrimages,

Of rounded worlds, of space and time,
Of the old flood's subsiding slime,
Of chemic matter, force, and form,

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:
The rushing metamorphosis
Dissolving all that fixture is,

Melts things that be to things that seem,
And solid nature to a dream.

O, listen to the undersong,

The ever old, the ever young;
And, far within those cadent pauses,
The chorus of the ancient Causes!
Delights the dreadful Destiny
To fling his voice into the tree,

And shock thy weak ear with a note
Breathed from the everlasting throat.
In music he repeats the pang

Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.
O mortal! thy ears are stones;
These echoes are laden with tones
Which only the pure can hear;

Once again the pine-tree sung:-
'Speak not thy speech my boughs among ;
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;
My hours are peaceful centuries.
Talk no more with feeble tongue;
No more the fool of space and time,
Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme.
Only thy Americans

Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,
But the runes that I rehearse

Understands the universe;

The least breath my boughs which tossed
Brings again the Pentecost,

To every soul resounding clear
In a voice of solemn cheer,-

"Am I not thine? Are not these thine?"
And they reply, "For ever mine!"
My branches speak Italian,
English, German, Basque, Castilian,
Mountain speech to Highlanders,
Ocean tongues to islanders,

To Fin, and Lap, and swart Malay,
To each his bosom secret say.

Come learn with me the fatal song
Which knits the world in music strong,
Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,

Of things with things, of times with times,
Primal chimes of sun and shade,
Of sound and echo, man and maid,
The land reflected in the flood,
Body with shadow still pursued.
For Nature beats in perfect tune,

And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.
The wood is wiser far than thou;

The wood and wave each other know.
Not unrelated, unaffied,

But to each thought and thing allied,
Is perfect Nature's every part,
Rooted in the mighty Heart.

But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed,
Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed?
Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded?
Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded?
Who thee divorced, deceived, and left?
Thee of thy faith who hath bereft,
And torn the ensigns from thy brow,
And sunk the immortal eye so low?

Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,
Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender
For royal man ;-they thee confess
An exile from the wilderness,-

The hills where health with health agrees,
And the wise soul expels disease.

Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign
By which thy hurt thou may'st divine.
Vihen thou shalt climb the mountain cliff,
Or see the wide shore from thy skiff,
To thee the horizon shall express
But emptiness on emptiness;
There lives no man of Nature's worth
In the circle of the earth;

And to thine eye the vast skies fall,
Dire and satirical

On clucking hens, and prating fools,
On thieves, on drudges, and on dolls,
And thou shalt say to the Most High,
"Godhead! all this astronomy,
And fate, and practice, and invention,
Strong art, and beautiful pretension,
This radiant pomp of sun and star,
Throes that were, and worlds that are,
Behold! were in vain and in vain ;-
It cannot be,-I will look again;
Surely now will the curtain rise,
And earth's fit tenant me surprise ;-
But the curtain doth not rise,
And Nature has miscarried wholly
Into failure, into folly."

'Alas! thine is the bankruptcy, Blessed Nature so to see.

Come, lay thee in my soothing shade,
And heal the hurts which sin has made.
I see thee in the crowd alone;

I will be thy companion.

Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,
And build to them a final tomb;

Let the starred shade that nightly falls
Still celebrate their funerals,
And the bell of beetle and of bee
Knell their melodious memory.
Behind thee leave thy merchandise,
Thy churches, and thy charities;
And leave thy peacock wit behind;
Enough for thee the primal mind

That flows in streams, that breathes in wind.
Leave all thy pedant lore apart;
God hid the whole world in thy heart.
Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns,
Gives all to them who all renounce.
The rain comes when the wind calls;
The river knows the way to the sea;
Without a pilot it runs and falls,
Blessing all lands with its charity;
The sea tosses and foams to find
Its way up to the cloud and wind;
The shadow sits close to the flying ball;
The date fails not on the palm-tree tall;
And thou,-go burn thy wormy pages,-
Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages.
Oft didst thou search the woods in vain
To find what bird had piped the strain;
Seek not, and the little eremite
Flies gayly forth and sings in sight.

'Hearken once more!

I will tell thee the mundane lore.
Older am I than thy numbers wot;
Change I may, but I pass not.
Hitherto all things fast abide,
And anchored in the tempest ride.
Trenchant time behooves to hurry
All to yean and all to bury:
All the forms are fugitive,
But the substances survive.
Ever fresh the broad creation,

A divine improvisation,

From the heart of God proceeds,

A single will, a million deeds.

Once slept the world an egg of stone,

And pulse, and sound, and light was none;

And God said "Throb!" and there was motion, And the vast mass became vast ocean.

Onward and on, the eternal Pan,

Who layeth the world's incessant plan, Halteth never in one shape,

But for ever doth escape,

Like wave or flame, into new forms
Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms.
I, that to-day am a pine,
Yesterday was a bundle of grass.
He is free and libertine,
Pouring of his power the wine
To every age, to every race;
Unto every race and age
He emptieth the beverage;
Unto each, and unto all,
Maker and original.

The world is the ring of his spells,
And the play of his miracles.
As he giveth to all to drink,
Thus or thus they are and think;
He giveth little or giveth much,
To make them several or such.
With one drop sheds form and feature;
With the next a special nature;
The third adds heat's indulgent spark;
The fourth gives light which eats the dark;
Into the fifth himself he flings,

And conscious Law is King of kings.
As the bee through the garden ranges
From world to world the godhead changes;
As the sheep go feeding in the waste,
From form to form he maketh haste;
This vault which glows immense with light
Is the inn where he lodges for a night.
What recks such Traveller if the bowers
Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers
A bunch of fragrant lilies be,

Or the stars of eternity?

Alike to him the better, the worse,

The glowing angel, the outcast corse.

Thou meetest him by centuries,

And lo! he passes like the breeze;
Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy,
He hides in pure transparency;

Thou askest in fountains and in fires,-
He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star,
He is the sparkle of the spar,

He is the heart of every creature,
He is the meaning of each feature;
And his mind is the sky,

Than all it holds more deep, more high.'

MONADNOCK.

THOUSAND minstrels woke within me,
'Our music's in the hills';-
Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-coloured rills.

Up!-If thou knew'st who calls
To twilight parks of beech and pine,
High over the river intervals,
Above the ploughman's highest line,
Over the owner's farthest walls!
Up! where the airy citadel

Oerlooks the surging landscape's swell!
Let not unto the stones the Day

Her lily and rose, her sea and land display;
Read the celestial sign!