Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 5

Heaven for which we pray,
Blow from the eternal hills! make glad
our earthly way!
8th mo., 1852.
SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE
LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE.
I. NOON.
White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,
Light
mists, whose soft embraces keep
The sunshine on the hills asleep!
O isles of calm! O dark, still wood!
And stiller skies that overbrood

Your rest with deeper quietude!
O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through
Yon mountain gaps, my
longing view
Beyond the purple and the blue,
To stiller sea and greener land,
And softer lights and airs more bland,

And skies,--the hollow of God's hand!
Transfused through you, O mountain friends!
With mine your solemn
spirit blends,
And life no more hath separate ends.

I read each misty mountain sign,
I know the voice of wave and pine,

And I am yours, and ye are mine.
Life's burdens fall, its discords cease,
I lapse into the glad release

Of Nature's own exceeding peace.
O welcome calm of heart and mind!
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened
rind
To leave a tenderer growth behind,
So fall the weary years away;
A child again, my head I lay
Upon
the lap of this sweet day.
This western wind hath Lethean powers,
Yon noonday cloud
nepenthe showers,
The lake is white with lotus-flowers!
Even Duty's voice is faint and low,
And slumberous Conscience,
waking slow,
Forgets her blotted scroll to show.
The Shadow which pursues us all,
Whose ever-nearing steps appall,

Whose voice we hear behind us call,--
That Shadow blends with mountain gray,
It speaks but what the light
waves say,--
Death walks apart from Fear to-day!
Rocked on her breast, these pines and I
Alike on Nature's love rely;

And equal seems to live or die.
Assured that He whose presence fills
With light the spaces of these
hills
No evil to His creatures wills,
The simple faith remains, that He
Will do, whatever that may be,

The best alike for man and tree.
What mosses over one shall grow,
What light and life the other know,

Unanxious, leaving Him to show.

II. EVENING.
Yon mountain's side is black with night,
While,
broad-orhed, o'er its gleaming crown
The moon, slow-rounding into
sight,
On the hushed inland sea looks down.
How start to light the clustering isles,
Each silver-hemmed! How
sharply show
The shadows of their rocky piles,
And tree-tops in the
wave below!
How far and strange the mountains seem,
Dim-looming through the
pale, still light
The vague, vast grouping of a dream,
They stretch
into the solemn night.
Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale,
Hushed by that presence
grand and grave,
Are silent, save the cricket's wail,
And low
response of leaf and wave.
Fair scenes! whereto the Day and Night
Make rival love, I leave ye
soon,
What time before the eastern light
The pale ghost of the
setting moon
Shall hide behind yon rocky spines,
And the young archer, Morn,
shall break
His arrows on the mountain pines,
And,
golden-sandalled, walk the lake!
Farewell! around this smiling bay
Gay-hearted Health, and Life in
bloom,
With lighter steps than mine, may stray
In radiant summers
yet to come.
But none shall more regretful leave
These waters and these hills than
I
Or, distant, fonder dream how eve
Or dawn is painting wave and
sky;
How rising moons shine sad and mild
On wooded isle and silvering
bay;
Or setting suns beyond the piled
And purple mountains lead
the day;

Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy,
Nor full-pulsed manhood,
lingering here,
Shall add, to life's abounding joy,
The charmed
repose to suffering dear.
Still waits kind Nature to impart
Her choicest gifts to such as gain

An entrance to her loving heart
Through the sharp discipline of pain.
Forever from the Hand that takes
One blessing from us others fall;

And, soon or late, our Father makes
His perfect recompense to all!
Oh, watched by Silence and the Night,
And folded in the strong
embrace
Of the great mountains, with the light
Of the sweet
heavens upon thy face,
Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower
Of beauty still, and while
above
Thy solemn mountains speak of power,
Be thou the mirror of
God's love.
1853.
THE FRUIT-GIFT.
Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky
Of sunset faded from our
hills and streams,
I sat, vague listening, lapped in twilight dreams,

To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry.
Then, like that basket, flush with summer fruit,
Dropped by the
angels at the Prophet's foot,
Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered
sweetness,
Full-orbed, and glowing with the prisoned beams
Of
summery suns, and rounded to completeness
By kisses of the
south-wind and the dew.
Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought I
knew
The pleasure of the homeward-turning Jew,
When Eshcol's
clusters on his shoulders lay,
Dropping their sweetness on his desert
way.
I said, "This fruit beseems no world of sin.
Its parent vine, rooted in
Paradise,
O'ercrept the wall, and never paid the price
Of the great

mischief,--an ambrosial tree,
Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in,

To keep the thorns and thistles company."
Perchance our frail, sad
mother plucked in haste
A single vine-slip as she passed the gate,

Where the dread sword alternate paled and burned,
And the stern
angel, pitying her fate,
Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned

Aside his face of fire; and thus the waste
And fallen world hath yet its
annual taste
Of primal good, to prove of