Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 3

revealing;
Familiar
as our childhood's stream,
Or pleasant memory of a dream
The
loved and cherished Past upon the new life stealing.
Serene and mild the untried light
May have its dawning;
And, as in
summer's northern night
The evening and the dawn unite,
The
sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.
I sit alone; in foam and 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