Poems of Nature, part 1, Frost Spirit etc | Page 3

spray?Wave after wave?Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray,?Shoulder the broken tide away,?Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft and cave.
What heed I of the dusty land?And noisy town??I see the mighty deep expand?From its white line of glimmering sand?To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts down!
In listless quietude of mind,?I yield to all?The change of cloud and wave and wind?And passive on the flood reclined,?I wander with the waves, and with them rise and fall.
But look, thou dreamer! wave and shore?In shadow lie;?The night-wind warns me back once more?To where, my native hill-tops o'er,?Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset sky.
So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell!?I bear with me?No token stone nor glittering shell,?But long and oft shall Memory tell?Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by the Sea.?1843.
A DREAM OF SUMMER.
Bland as the morning breath of June?The southwest breezes play;?And, through its haze, the winter noon?Seems warm as summer's day.?The snow-plumed Angel of the North?Has dropped his icy spear;?Again the mossy earth looks forth,?Again the streams gush clear.
The fox his hillside cell forsakes,?The muskrat leaves his nook,?The bluebird in the meadow brakes?Is singing with the brook.?"Bear up, O Mother Nature!" cry?Bird, breeze, and streamlet free;?"Our winter voices prophesy?Of summer days to thee!"
So, in those winters of the soul,?By bitter blasts and drear?O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole,?Will sunny days appear.?Reviving Hope and Faith, they show?The soul its living powers,?And how beneath the winter's snow?Lie germs of summer flowers!
The Night is mother of the Day,?The Winter of the Spring,?And ever upon old Decay?The greenest mosses cling.?Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,?Through showers the sunbeams fall;?For God, who loveth all His works,?Has left His hope with all!?4th 1st month, 1847.
THE LAKESIDE
The shadows round the inland sea?Are deepening into night;?Slow up the slopes of Ossipee?They chase the lessening light.?Tired of the long day's blinding heat,?I rest my languid eye,?Lake of the Hills! where, cool and sweet,?Thy sunset waters lie!
Along the sky, in wavy lines,?O'er isle and reach and bay,?Green-belted with eternal pines,?The mountains stretch away.?Below, the maple masses sleep?Where shore with water blends,?While midway on the tranquil deep?The evening light descends.
So seemed it when yon hill's red crown,?Of old, the Indian trod,?And, through the sunset air, looked down?Upon the Smile of God.?To him of light and shade the laws?No forest skeptic taught;?Their living and eternal Cause?His truer instinct sought.
He saw these mountains in the light?Which now across them shines;?This lake, in summer sunset bright,?Walled round with sombering pines.?God near him seemed; from earth and skies?His loving voice he beard,?As, face to face, in Paradise,?Man stood before the Lord.
Thanks, O our Father! that, like him,?Thy tender love I see,?In radiant hill and woodland dim,?And tinted sunset sea.?For not in mockery dost Thou fill?Our earth with light and grace;?Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will?Behind Thy smiling face!?1849.
AUTUMN THOUGHTS
Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers,?And gone the Summer's pomp and show,?And Autumn, in his leafless bowers,?Is waiting for the Winter's snow.
I said to Earth, so cold and gray,?"An emblem of myself thou art."?"Not so," the Earth did seem to say,?"For Spring shall warm my frozen heart."?I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams?Of warmer sun and softer rain,?And wait to hear the sound of streams?And songs of merry birds again.
But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone,?For whom the flowers no longer blow,?Who standest blighted and forlorn,?Like Autumn waiting for the snow;
No hope is thine of sunnier hours,?Thy Winter shall no more depart;?No Spring revive thy wasted flowers,?Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.?1849.
ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR.
All day the darkness and the cold?Upon my heart have lain,?Like shadows on the winter sky,?Like frost upon the pane;
But now my torpid fancy wakes,?And, on thy Eagle's plume,?Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird,?Or witch upon her broom!
Below me roar the rocking pines,?Before me spreads the lake?Whose long and solemn-sounding waves?Against the sunset break.
I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh?The grain he has not sown;?I see, with flashing scythe of fire,?The prairie harvest mown!
I hear the far-off voyager's horn;?I see the Yankee's trail,--?His foot on every mountain-pass,?On every stream his sail.
By forest, lake, and waterfall,?I see his pedler show;?The mighty mingling with the mean,?The lofty with the low.
He's whittling by St. Mary's Falls,?Upon his loaded wain;?He's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks,?With eager eyes of gain.
I hear the mattock in the mine,?The axe-stroke in the dell,?The clamor from the Indian lodge,?The Jesuit chapel bell!
I see the swarthy trappers come?From Mississippi's springs;?And war-chiefs with their painted brows,?And crests of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe,?The steamer smokes and raves;?And city lots are staked for sale?Above old Indian graves.
I hear the tread of pioneers?Of nations yet to be;?The first low wash of waves, where soon?Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here?Are plastic yet and warm;?The chaos of