In Divers Tones | Page 8

barns, and the wind?Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight,
and sways them?Softly at will, or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft.
Now at this season the reels are empty and idle; I see them Over the lines of the dikes, over the gossiping grass.?Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, thro' the lonesome Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls.?Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them; Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long,?Winnowing soft gray wings of marsh-owls wander and wander,?Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike.?Soon, thro' their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning, Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening wind.
Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot shafts of the sunlight Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled with dew Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms of drift-net Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land.
Well I remember it all. The salt raw scent of the margin;?While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel, and the net, Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled in its station; Then each man to his home,--well I remember it all!
Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of the landscape,-- Stranded boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush,?One gray hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of haystacks,-- More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes me home.
Ah the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture,--?Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt! Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marsh-land,-- Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,--?Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,?Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change.
THE SLAVE WOMAN.
Shedding cool drops upon the sun-baked clay,?The dripping jar, brimful, she rests a space?On the well's dry white brink, and leans her face,?Heavy with tears and many a heartsick day,?Down to the water's lip, whence slips away?A rivulet thro' the hot, bright square apace,?And lo! her brow casts off each servile trace--?The wave's cool breath hath won her thoughts astray.
Ah desolate heart! Thy fate thou hast forgot?One moment; the dull pain hath left those eyes?Whose yearning pierces time, and space, and tears.?Thou seest what was once, but now is not,--?By Niger thy bright home, thy Paradise,?Unscathed of flame, and foe, and hostile spears.
THE MARVELLOUS WORK.
"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me"--Whitman
Not yet, for all their quest of it, have men?Cast wholly by the ignoble dread of truth!?Each of God's laws, if but so late discerned?Their faiths upgrew unsuckled in it, fills?Their hearts with angry fears, perchance lest God?Be dwarfed behind his own decrees, or made?Superfluous through his perfectness of deed!?But large increase of knowledge in these days?Is come about us, fraught with ill for them?Whose creeds are cut too straight to hold new growth,?Whose faiths are clamped against access of wisdom;?Fraught with some sadness, too, for those just souls?Who, clothed in rigid teachings found too scant,?Are fain to piece the dear accustomed garb,?Till here a liberal, there a literal fragment,?Here new, there old, here bright, there dark, disclose?Their vestiture a strange discordant motley.?But O rare motley,--starred with thirst of truth,?Patched with desire of wisdom, zoned about?With passion for fresh knowledge, and the quest?Of right! Such motley may be made at last,?Through grave sincerity, a dawn-clear garment!
But, for the enfranchised spirit, this expanse?Immeasurable of broad-horizoned view,--?What rapt, considerate awe it summons forth,?What adoration of the Eternal Cause!?His days unmeasured ages, His designs?Unfold through age-long silences, through surge?Of world upheaval, coming to their aim?As swerveless in fit time as tho' His finger?But yesterday ordained, and wrought to-day.?How the Eternal's unconcern of time,--?Omnipotence that hath not dreamed of haste,--?Is graven in granite-moulding aeons' gloom;?Is told in stony record of the roar?Of long Silurian storms, and tempests huge?Scourging the circuit of Devonian seas;?Is whispered in the noiseless mists, the gray?Soft drip of clouds about rank fern-forests,?Through dateless terms that stored the layered coal;?Is uttered hoarse in strange Triassic forms?Of monstrous life; or stamped in ice-blue gleams?Athwart the death-still years of glacial sleep!
Down the stupendous sequence, age on age,?Thro' storm and peace, thro' shine and gloom, thro' warm?And pregnant periods of teeming birth,?And seething realms of thunderous overthrow,--?In the obscure and formless dawn of life,?In gradual march from simple to complex,?From lower to higher forms, and last to Man?Through faint prophetic fashions,--stands declared?The God of order and unchanging purpose.?Creation, which He covers, Him contains,?Even to the least up-groping atom. His?The impulse and the quickening germ, whereby?All things strive upward, reach toward greater good;?Till craving brute, informed with soul, grows Man,?And Man turns homeward, yearning back to God.
A SONG OF DEPENDENCE.
Love, what were fame,?And