Poems of Nature, part 2, Mountain Pictures etc | Page 3

haze?Thy prophecy of summer days.
Come with thy green relief of promise,?And to this dead, cold splendor bring?The living jewels of the spring!?1869.
THE PRESSED GENTIAN.
The time of gifts has come again,?And, on my northern window-pane,?Outlined against the day's brief light,?A Christmas token hangs in sight.
The wayside travellers, as they pass,?Mark the gray disk of clouded glass;?And the dull blankness seems, perchance,?Folly to their wise ignorance.
They cannot from their outlook see?The perfect grace it hath for me;?For there the flower, whose fringes through?The frosty breath of autumn blew,?Turns from without its face of bloom?To the warm tropic of my room,?As fair as when beside its brook?The hue of bending skies it took.
So from the trodden ways of earth,?Seem some sweet souls who veil their worth,?And offer to the careless glance?The clouding gray of circumstance.?They blossom best where hearth-fires burn,?To loving eyes alone they turn?The flowers of inward grace, that hide?Their beauty from the world outside.
But deeper meanings come to me,?My half-immortal flower, from thee!?Man judges from a partial view,?None ever yet his brother knew;?The Eternal Eye that sees the whole?May better read the darkened soul,?And find, to outward sense denied,?The flower upon its inmost side?1872.
A MYSTERY.
The river hemmed with leaning trees?Wound through its meadows green;?A low, blue line of mountains showed?The open pines between.
One sharp, tall peak above them all?Clear into sunlight sprang?I saw the river of my dreams,?The mountains that I sang!
No clue of memory led me on,?But well the ways I knew;?A feeling of familiar things?With every footstep grew.
Not otherwise above its crag?Could lean the blasted pine;?Not otherwise the maple hold?Aloft its red ensign.
So up the long and shorn foot-hills?The mountain road should creep;?So, green and low, the meadow fold?Its red-haired kine asleep.
The river wound as it should wind;?Their place the mountains took;?The white torn fringes of their clouds?Wore no unwonted look.
Yet ne'er before that river's rim?Was pressed by feet of mine,?Never before mine eyes had crossed?That broken mountain line.
A presence, strange at once and known,?Walked with me as my guide;?The skirts of some forgotten life?Trailed noiseless at my side.
Was it a dim-remembered dream??Or glimpse through ions old??The secret which the mountains kept?The river never told.
But from the vision ere it passed?A tender hope I drew,?And, pleasant as a dawn of spring,?The thought within me grew,
That love would temper every change,?And soften all surprise,?And, misty with the dreams of earth,?The hills of Heaven arise.?1873.
A SEA DREAM.
We saw the slow tides go and come,?The curving surf-lines lightly drawn,?The gray rocks touched with tender bloom?Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn.
We saw in richer sunsets lost?The sombre pomp of showery noons;?And signalled spectral sails that crossed?The weird, low light of rising moons.
On stormy eves from cliff and head?We saw the white spray tossed and spurned;?While over all, in gold and red,?Its face of fire the lighthouse turned.
The rail-car brought its daily crowds,?Half curious, half indifferent,?Like passing sails or floating clouds,?We saw them as they came and went.
But, one calm morning, as we lay?And watched the mirage-lifted wall?Of coast, across the dreamy bay,?And heard afar the curlew call,
And nearer voices, wild or tame,?Of airy flock and childish throng,?Up from the water's edge there came?Faint snatches of familiar song.
Careless we heard the singer's choice?Of old and common airs; at last?The tender pathos of his voice?In one low chanson held us fast.
A song that mingled joy and pain,?And memories old and sadly sweet;?While, timing to its minor strain,?The waves in lapsing cadence beat.
. . . . .
The waves are glad in breeze and sun;?The rocks are fringed with foam;?I walk once more a haunted shore,?A stranger, yet at home,?A land of dreams I roam.
Is this the wind, the soft sea wind?That stirred thy locks of brown??Are these the rocks whose mosses knew?The trail of thy light gown,?Where boy and girl sat down?
I see the gray fort's broken wall,?The boats that rock below;?And, out at sea, the passing sails?We saw so long ago?Rose-red in morning's glow.
The freshness of the early time?On every breeze is blown;?As glad the sea, as blue the sky,--?The change is ours alone;?The saddest is my own.
A stranger now, a world-worn man,?Is he who bears my name;?But thou, methinks, whose mortal life?Immortal youth became,?Art evermore the same.
Thou art not here, thou art not there,?Thy place I cannot see;?I only know that where thou art?The blessed angels be,?And heaven is glad for thee.
Forgive me if the evil years?Have left on me their sign;?Wash out, O soul so beautiful,?The many stains of mine?In tears of love divine!
I could not look on thee and live,?If thou wert by my side;?The vision of a shining one,?The white and heavenly bride,?Is well to me denied.
But turn to me thy dear girl-face?Without the angel's crown,?The wedded roses of thy lips,?Thy loose hair rippling down?In waves of golden brown.
Look forth once more through space and time,?And let thy sweet shade fall?In