In Divers Tones | Page 9

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 thou not in it,
That I should hold it
worth
Much toil to win it?
What were success
Didst thou not share it?
As Spring can spare the
snows
I well could spare it!
Love, what were love
But of thy giving
That it should much prevail

To sweeten living?
Nay, what were life,
Save thou inspire it,
That I should bid my soul

Greatly desire it?
ON THE CREEK.
Dear Heart, the noisy strife
And bitter carpings cease.
Here is the
lap of life,
Here are the lips of peace.
Afar from stir of streets,
The city's dust and din,
What healing
silence meets
And greets us gliding in!
Our light birch silent floats;
Soundless the paddle dips.
Yon
sunbeam thick with motes
Athro' the leafage slips,
To light the iris wings
Of dragon-flies alit
On lily-leaves, and things

Of gauze that float and flit.

Above the water's brink
Hush'd winds make summer riot;
Our
thirsty spirits drink
Deep, deep, the summer quiet.
We slip the world's gray husk,
Emerge, and spread new plumes;
In
sunbeam-fretted dusk,
Thro' populous golden glooms,
Like thistledown we slide,
Two disembodied dreams,--
With spirits
alert, wide-eyed,
Explore the perfume-streams.
For scents of various grass
Stream down the veering breeze;
Warm
puffs of honey pass
From flowering linden-trees;
And fragrant gusts of gum,
From clammy balm-tree buds,
With
fern-brake odors, come
From intricate solitudes.
The elm-tops are astir
With flirt of idle wings.
Hark to the grackles'
chirr
Whene'er an elm-bough swings!
From off yon ash-limb sere
Out-thrust amid green branches,
Keen
like an azure spear
A kingfisher down launches.
Far up the creek his calls
And lessening laugh retreat;
Again the
silence falls,
And soft the green hours fleet.
They fleet with drowsy hum
Of insects on the wing;--
We sigh--the
end must come!
We taste our pleasure's sting.
No more, then, need we try
The rapture to regain.
We feel our day
slip by,
And cling to it in vain.
But, Dear, keep thou in mind
These moments swift and sweet!

Their memory thou shall find
Illume the common street;
And thro' the dust and din,
Smiling, thy heart shall hear
Quiet
waters lapsing thin,
And locusts shrilling clear.

LOTOS.
Wherefore awake so long,
Wide-eyed, laden with care?
Not all
battle is life,
But a little respite and peace
May fold us round as a
fleece
Soft-woven for all men's wear.
Sleep, then, mindless of strife;

Slumber, dreamless of wrong;--
Hearken my slumber-song,
Falling asleep.
Drowsily all noon long
The warm winds rustle the grass
Hush'dly,
lulling thy brain,--
Burthened with murmur of bees
And numberless
whispers, and ease.
Dream-clouds gather and pass
Of painless
remembrance of pain.
Havened from rumor of wrong,
Dreams are
thy slumber-song,
Fallen asleep.
THE SOWER.
A brown sad-colored hillside, where the soil,
Fresh from the frequent
harrow, deep and fine,
Lies bare; no break in the remote sky-line,

Save where a flock of pigeons streams aloft,
Startled from feed in
some low-lying croft,
Or far-off spires with yellow of sunset shine;

And here the Sower, unwittingly divine,
Exerts the silent forethought
of his toil.
Alone he treads the glebe, his measured stride
Dumb in the yielding
soil; and tho' small joy
Dwell in his heavy face, as spreads the blind

Pale grain from his dispensing palm aside,
This plodding churl
grows great in his employ;--
Godlike, he makes provision for
mankind.
THE POTATO HARVEST.
A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
Aslant from
sunset; amber wastes of sky
Washing the ridge, a clamor of crows

that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon
their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
A line of gray snake-fence,
that zigzags by
A pond, and cattle, from the homestead nigh
The
long deep summonings of the supper horn.
Black, on the ridge, against that lonely flush,
A cart, and
stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside,
Some barrels, and the