Lyrics of Earth | Page 3

slim-pinioned swallows sweep and pass
Down to the far-off river; the black crow?With wise and wary visage to and fro?Settles and stalks about the withered grass.
Here, when the murmurous May-day is half gone,
The watchful lark before my feet takes flight,?And wheeling to some lonelier field far on,
Drops with obstreperous cry; and here at night,?When the first star precedes the great red moon,
The shore-lark tinkles from the darkening field,?Somewhere, we know not, in the dusk concealed,?His little creakling and continuous tune.
Here, too, the robins, lusty as of old,
Hunt the waste grass for forage, or prolong?From every quarter of these fields the bold,
Blithe phrases of their never-finished song.?The white-throat's distant descant with slow stress
Note after note upon the noonday falls,?Filling the leisured air at intervals?With his own mood of piercing pensiveness.
How often from this windy upland perch,
Mine eyes have seen the forest break in bloom,?The rose-red maple and the golden birch,
The dusty yellow of the elms, the gloom?Of the tall poplar hung with tasseled black;
Ah, I have watched, till eye and ear and brain?Grew full of dreams as they, the moted plain,?The sun-steeped wood, the marsh-land at its back,
The valley where the river wheels and fills,
Yon city glimmering in its smoky shroud,?And out at the last misty rim the hills
Blue and far off and mounded like a cloud,?And here the noisy rutted road that goes
Down the slope yonder, flanked on either side?With the smooth-furrowed fields flung black and wide, Patched with pale water sleeping in the rows.
So as I watched the crowded leaves expand,
The bloom break sheath, the summer's strength uprear, In earth's great mother's heart already planned
The heaped and burgeoned plenty of the year,?Even as she from out her wintry cell
My spirit also sprang to life anew,?And day by day as the spring's bounty grew,?Its conquering joy possessed me like a spell.
In reverie by day and midnight dream
I sought these upland fields and walked apart,?Musing on Nature, till my thought did seem
To read the very secrets of her heart;?In mooded moments earnest and sublime
I stored the themes of many a future song,?Whose substance should be Nature's, clear and strong, Bound in a casket of majestic rhyme.
Brave bud-like plans that never reached the fruit,
Like hers our mother's who with every hour,?Easily replenished from the sleepless root,
Covers her bosom with fresh bud and flower;?Yet I was happy as young lovers be,
Who in the season of their passion's birth?Deem that they have their utmost worship's worth,?If love be near them, just to hear and see.
IN MAY
Grief was my master yesternight;
To-morrow I may grieve again;?But now along the windy plain?The clouds have taken flight.
The sowers in the furrows go;
The lusty river brimmeth on;?The curtains from the hills are gone;?The leaves are out; and lo,
The silvery distance of the day,
The light horizons, and between?The glory of the perfect green,?The tumult of the May.
The bobolinks at noonday sing
More softly than the softest flute,?And lightlier than the lightest lute?Their fairy tambours ring.
The roads far off are towered with dust;
The cherry-blooms are swept and thinned;?In yonder swaying elms the wind?Is charging gust on gust.
But here there is no stir at all;
The ministers of sun and shadow?Horde all the perfumes of the meadow?Behind a grassy wall.
An infant rivulet wind-free
Adown the guarded hollow sets,?Over whose brink the violets?Are nodding peacefully.
From pool to pool it prattles by;
The flashing swallows dip and pass,?Above the tufted marish grass,?And here at rest am I.
I care not for the old distress,
Nor if to-morrow bid me moan;?To-day is mine, and I have known?An hour of blessedness.
LIFE AND NATURE
I passed through the gates of the city,?The streets were strange and still,?Through the doors of the open churches?The organs were moaning shrill.
Through the doors and the great high windows?I heard the murmur of prayer,?And the sound of their solemn singing?Streamed out on the sunlit air;
A sound of some great burden?That lay on the world's dark breast,?Of the old, and the sick, and the lonely,?And the weary that cried for rest.
I strayed through the midst of the city?Like one distracted or mad.?"Oh, Life! Oh, Life!" I kept saying,?And the very word seemed sad.
I passed through the gates of the city,?And I heard the small birds sing,?I laid me down in the meadows?Afar from the bell-ringing.
In the depth and the bloom of the meadows?I lay on the earth's quiet breast,?The poplar fanned me with shadows,?And the veery sang me to rest.
Blue, blue was the heaven above me,?And the earth green at my feet;?"Oh, Life! Oh, Life!" I kept saying,?And the very word seemed sweet.
WITH THE NIGHT
O doubts, dull passions, and base fears,?That harassed and oppressed the day,?Ye poor remorses and vain tears,?That shook this house of clay:
All heaven to the western bars?Is glittering with the darker dawn;?Here with the earth, the night, the stars,?Ye have no place: begone!
JUNE
Long, long ago, it seems, this summer morn
That pale-browed April passed with pensive tread?Through the