Poems of Nature, part 2, Mountain Pictures etc | Page 4

tenderest grace of soul and form?On memory's frescoed wall,?A shadow, and yet all!
Draw near, more near, forever dear!?Where'er I rest or roam,?Or in the city's crowded streets,?Or by the blown sea foam,?The thought of thee is home!
. . . . .
At breakfast hour the singer read?The city news, with comment wise,?Like one who felt the pulse of trade?Beneath his finger fall and rise.
His look, his air, his curt speech, told?The man of action, not of books,?To whom the corners made in gold?And stocks were more than seaside nooks.
Of life beneath the life confessed?His song had hinted unawares;?Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed,?Of human hearts in bulls and bears.
But eyes in vain were turned to watch?That face so hard and shrewd and strong;?And ears in vain grew sharp to catch?The meaning of that morning song.
In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought?To sound him, leaving as she came;?Her baited album only caught?A common, unromantic name.
No word betrayed the mystery fine,?That trembled on the singer's tongue;?He came and went, and left no sign?Behind him save the song he sung.?1874.
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
The summer warmth has left the sky,?The summer songs have died away;?And, withered, in the footpaths lie?The fallen leaves, but yesterday?With ruby and with topaz gay.
The grass is browning on the hills;?No pale, belated flowers recall?The astral fringes of the rills,?And drearily the dead vines fall,?Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.
Yet through the gray and sombre wood,?Against the dusk of fir and pine,?Last of their floral sisterhood,?The hazel's yellow blossoms shine,?The tawny gold of Afric's mine!
Small beauty hath my unsung flower,?For spring to own or summer hail;?But, in the season's saddest hour,?To skies that weep and winds that wail?Its glad surprisals never fail.
O days grown cold! O life grown old?No rose of June may bloom again;?But, like the hazel's twisted gold,?Through early frost and latter rain?Shall hints of summer-time remain.
And as within the hazel's bough?A gift of mystic virtue dwells,?That points to golden ores below,?And in dry desert places tells?Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells,
So, in the wise Diviner's hand,?Be mine the hazel's grateful part?To feel, beneath a thirsty land,?The living waters thrill and start,?The beating of the rivulet's heart!
Sufficeth me the gift to light?With latest bloom the dark, cold days;?To call some hidden spring to sight?That, in these dry and dusty ways,?Shall sing its pleasant song of praise.
O Love! the hazel-wand may fail,?But thou canst lend the surer spell,?That, passing over Baca's vale,?Repeats the old-time miracle,?And makes the desert-land a well.?1874.
SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP.
A gold fringe on the purpling hem?Of hills the river runs,?As down its long, green valley falls?The last of summer's suns.
Along its tawny gravel-bed?Broad-flowing, swift, and still,?As if its meadow levels felt?The hurry of the hill,?Noiseless between its banks of green?From curve to curve it slips;?The drowsy maple-shadows rest?Like fingers on its lips.
A waif from Carroll's wildest hills,?Unstoried and unknown;?The ursine legend of its name?Prowls on its banks alone.?Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn?As ever Yarrow knew,?Or, under rainy Irish skies,?By Spenser's Mulla grew;?And through the gaps of leaning trees?Its mountain cradle shows?The gold against the amethyst,?The green against the rose.
Touched by a light that hath no name,?A glory never sung,?Aloft on sky and mountain wall?Are God's great pictures hung.?How changed the summits vast and old!?No longer granite-browed,?They melt in rosy mist; the rock?Is softer than the cloud;?The valley holds its breath; no leaf?Of all its elms is twirled?The silence of eternity?Seems falling on the world.
The pause before the breaking seals?Of mystery is this;?Yon miracle-play of night and day?Makes dumb its witnesses.?What unseen altar crowns the hills?That reach up stair on stair??What eyes look through, what white wings fan?These purple veils of air??What Presence from the heavenly heights?To those of earth stoops down??Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods?On Ida's snowy crown!
Slow fades the vision of the sky,?The golden water pales,?And over all the valley-land?A gray-winged vapor sails.?I go the common way of all;?The sunset fires will burn,?The flowers will blow, the river flow,?When I no more return.?No whisper from the mountain pine?Nor lapsing stream shall tell?The stranger, treading where I tread,?Of him who loved them well.
But beauty seen is never lost,?God's colors all are fast;?The glory of this sunset heaven?Into my soul has passed,?A sense of gladness unconfined?To mortal date or clime;?As the soul liveth, it shall live?Beyond the years of time.?Beside the mystic asphodels?Shall bloom the home-born flowers,?And new horizons flush and glow?With sunset hues of ours.
Farewell! these smiling hills must wear?Too soon their wintry frown,?And snow-cold winds from off them shake?The maple's red leaves down.?But I shall see a summer sun?Still setting broad and low;?The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,?The golden water flow.?A lover's claim is mine on all?I see to have and hold,--?The rose-light of perpetual hills,?And sunsets never cold!?1876
THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL.
They left their home of summer ease?Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,?To seek, by