Poems of Nature, part 2, Mountain Pictures etc | Page 6

sunrise through the pines!?How stretched the birchen shadows,?Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines?The westward sloping meadows!
The sweet day, opening as a flower?Unfolds its petals tender,?Renews for us at noontide's hour?The summer's tempered splendor.
The birds are hushed; alone the wind,?That through the woodland searches,?The red-oak's lingering leaves can find,?And yellow plumes of larches.
But still the balsam-breathing pine?Invites no thought of sorrow,?No hint of loss from air like wine?The earth's content can borrow.
The summer and the winter here?Midway a truce are holding,?A soft, consenting atmosphere?Their tents of peace enfolding.
The silent woods, the lonely hills,?Rise solemn in their gladness;?The quiet that the valley fills?Is scarcely joy or sadness.
How strange! The autumn yesterday?In winter's grasp seemed dying;?On whirling winds from skies of gray?The early snow was flying.
And now, while over Nature's mood?There steals a soft relenting,?I will not mar the present good,?Forecasting or lamenting.
My autumn time and Nature's hold?A dreamy tryst together,?And, both grown old, about us fold?The golden-tissued weather.
I lean my heart against the day?To feel its bland caressing;?I will not let it pass away?Before it leaves its blessing.
God's angels come not as of old?The Syrian shepherds knew them;?In reddening dawns, in sunset gold,?And warm noon lights I view them.
Nor need there is, in times like this?When heaven to earth draws nearer,?Of wing or song as witnesses?To make their presence clearer.
O stream of life, whose swifter flow?Is of the end forewarning,?Methinks thy sundown afterglow?Seems less of night than morning!
Old cares grow light; aside I lay?The doubts and fears that troubled;?The quiet of the happy day?Within my soul is doubled.
That clouds must veil this fair sunshine?Not less a joy I find it;?Nor less yon warm horizon line?That winter lurks behind it.
The mystery of the untried days?I close my eyes from reading;?His will be done whose darkest ways?To light and life are leading!
Less drear the winter night shall be,?If memory cheer and hearten?Its heavy hours with thoughts of thee,?Sweet summer of St. Martin!?1880.
STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM.
A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw?On Carmel prophesying rain, began?To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan,?Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw
Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat?Down the long valley's murmuring pines, and woke?The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke?Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' feet.
Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness swept?Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range;?A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange,?From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped.
One moment, as if challenging the storm,?Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel?Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell,?And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form.
And over all the still unhidden sun,?Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain,?Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain;?And, when the tumult and the strife were done,
With one foot on the lake and one on land,?Framing within his crescent's tinted streak?A far-off picture of the Melvin peak,?Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel spanned.?1882.
A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE.
To kneel before some saintly shrine,?To breathe the health of airs divine,?Or bathe where sacred rivers flow,?The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go.?I too, a palmer, take, as they?With staff and scallop-shell, my way?To feel, from burdening cares and ills,?The strong uplifting of the hills.
The years are many since, at first,?For dreamed-of wonders all athirst,?I saw on Winnipesaukee fall?The shadow of the mountain wall.?Ah! where are they who sailed with me?The beautiful island-studded sea??And am I he whose keen surprise?Flashed out from such unclouded eyes?
Still, when the sun of summer burns,?My longing for the hills returns;?And northward, leaving at my back?The warm vale of the Merrimac,?I go to meet the winds of morn,?Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born,?Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy?The hunger of a lowland eye.
Again I see the day decline?Along a ridged horizon line;?Touching the hill-tops, as a nun?Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun.?One lake lies golden, which shall soon?Be silver in the rising moon;?And one, the crimson of the skies?And mountain purple multiplies.
With the untroubled quiet blends?The distance-softened voice of friends;?The girl's light laugh no discord brings?To the low song the pine-tree sings;?And, not unwelcome, comes the hail?Of boyhood from his nearing sail.?The human presence breaks no spell,?And sunset still is miracle!
Calm as the hour, methinks I feel?A sense of worship o'er me steal;?Not that of satyr-charming Pan,?No cult of Nature shaming man,?Not Beauty's self, but that which lives?And shines through all the veils it weaves,--?Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood,?Their witness to the Eternal Good!
And if, by fond illusion, here?The earth to heaven seems drawing near,?And yon outlying range invites?To other and serener heights,?Scarce hid behind its topmost swell,?The shining Mounts Delectable?A dream may hint of truth no less?Than the sharp light of wakefulness.
As through her vale of incense smoke.?Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke,?More than her heathen oracle,?May not this trance of sunset tell?That Nature's forms of loveliness?Their heavenly archetypes confess,?Fashioned like Israel's ark alone?From patterns in the Mount made known?
A holier