Lyrics of Earth | Page 8

milkweed opens its pod,?Tempting the wind.
Aloft on the hill,?A cloudrift opens and shines?Through a break in its gorget of pines,?And it dreams at my feet?In a sad, silvery sheet,?Utterly still.
All things that be?Seem plunged into silence, distraught,?By some stern, some necessitous thought:?It wraps and enthralls?Marsh, meadow, and forest; and falls?Also on me.
SNOWBIRDS
Along the narrow sandy height?I watch them swiftly come and go,?Or round the leafless wood,?Like flurries of wind-driven snow,?Revolving in perpetual flight,
A changing multitude.
Nearer and nearer still they sway,?And, scattering in a circled sweep,?Rush down without a sound;?And now I see them peer and peep,?Across yon level bleak and gray,
Searching the frozen ground,--
Until a little wind upheaves,?And makes a sudden rustling there,?And then they drop their play,?Flash up into the sunless air,?And like a flight of silver leaves
Swirl round and sweep away.
SNOW
White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;?The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,?A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly.
The road before me smooths and fills
Apace, and all about?The fences dwindle, and the hills
Are blotted slowly out;?The naked trees loom spectrally
Into the dim white sky.
The meadows and far-sheeted streams
Lie still without a sound;?Like some soft minister of dreams
The snow-fall hoods me round;?In wood and water, earth and air,
A silence everywhere.
Save when at lonely intervals
Some farmer's sleigh, urged on,?With rustling runners and sharp bells,
Swings by me and is gone;?Or from the empty waste I hear
A sound remote and clear;
The barking of a dog, or call
To cattle, sharply pealed,?Borne echoing from some wayside stall
Or barnyard far a-field;?Then all is silent, and the snow
Falls, settling soft and slow.
The evening deepens, and the gray
Folds closer earth and sky;?The world seems shrouded far away;
Its noises sleep, and I,?As secret as yon buried stream,
Plod dumbly on, and dream.
SUNSET
From this windy bridge at rest,?In some former curious hour,?We have watched the city's hue,?All along the orange west,?Cupola and pointed tower,?Darken into solid blue.
Tho' the biting north wind breaks?Full across this drifted hold,?Let us stand with ic��d cheeks?Watching westward as of old;
Past the violet mountain-head?To the farthest fringe of pine,?Where far off the purple-red?Narrows to a dusky line,?And the last pale splendors die?Slowly from the olive sky;
Till the thin clouds wear away?Into threads of purple-gray,?And the sudden stars between?Brighten in the pallid green;
Till above the spacious east,?Slow return��d one by one,?Like pale prisoners released?From the dungeons of the sun,?Capella and her train appear?In the glittering Charioteer;
Till the rounded moon shall grow?Great above the eastern snow,?Shining into burnished gold;?And the silver earth outrolled,?In the misty yellow light,?Shall take on the width of night.
WINTER-STORE
Subtly conscious, all awake,?Let us clear our eyes, and break?Through the cloudy chrysalis,?See the wonder as it is.?Down a narrow alley, blind,?Touch and vision, heart and mind;?Turned sharply inward, still we plod,?Till the calmly smiling god?Leaves us, and our spirits grow?More thin, more acrid, as we go.?Creeping by the sullen wall,?We forego the power to see,?The threads that bind us to the All,?God or the Immensity;?Whereof on the eternal road?Man is but a passing mode.
Too blind we are, too little see?Of the magic pageantry,?Every minute, every hour,?From the cloudflake to the flower,?Forever old, forever strange,?Issuing in perpetual change?From the rainbow gates of Time.
But he who through this common air?Surely knows the great and fair,?What is lovely, what sublime,?Becomes in an increasing span,?One with earth and one with man,?One, despite these mortal scars,?With the planets and the stars;?And Nature from her holy place,?Bending with unveil��d face,?Fills him in her divine employ?With her own majestic joy.
Up the fielded slopes at morn,?Where light wefts of shadow pass,?Films upon the bending corn,?I shall sweep the purple grass.?Sun-crowned heights and mossy woods,?And the outer solitudes,?Mountain-valleys, dim with pine,?Shall be home and haunt of mine.?I shall search in crannied hollows,?Where the sunlight scarcely follows,?And the secret forest brook?Murmurs, and from nook to nook?Forever downward curls and cools,?Frothing in the bouldered pools.
Many a noon shall find me laid?In the pungent balsam shade,?Where sharp breezes spring and shiver?On some deep rough-coasted river,?And the plangent waters come,?Amber-hued and streaked with foam;?Where beneath the sunburnt hills?All day long the crowded mills?With remorseless champ and scream?Overlord the sluicing stream,?And the rapids' iron roar?Hammers at the forest's core;?Where corded rafts creep slowly on,?Glittering in the noonday sun,?And the tawny river-dogs,?Shepherding the branded logs,?Bind and heave with cadenced cry;?Where the blackened tugs go by,?Panting hard and straining slow,?Laboring at the weighty tow,?Flat-nosed barges all in trim,?Creeping in long cumbrous line,?Loaded to the water's brim?With the clean, cool-scented pine.
Perhaps in some low meadow-land,?Stretching wide on either hand,?I shall see the belted bees?Rocking with the tricksy breeze?In the spir��d meadow-sweet,?Or with eager trampling feet?Burrowing in the boneset blooms,?Treading out the dry perfumes.?Where sun-hot hay-fields newly mown?Climb the hillside ruddy brown,?I shall see the haymakers,?While the noonday scarcely stirs,?Brown of neck and booted gray,?Tossing up the rustling hay,?While the hay-racks bend and