Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 8

the soil, nor here?Is the bad lesson learned at human rights to sneer.
XXV.?Then let the icy north-wind blow?The trumpets of the coming storm,?To arrowy sleet and blinding snow?Yon slanting lines of rain transform.?Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold,?As gayly as I did of old;?And I, who watch them through the frosty pane,?Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again.
XXVI.?And I will trust that He who heeds?The life that hides in mead and wold,?Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads,?And stains these mosses green and gold,?Will still, as He hath done, incline?His gracious care to me and mine;?Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar,?And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star!
XXVII.?I have not seen, I may not see,?My hopes for man take form in fact,?But God will give the victory?In due time; in that faith I act.?And lie who sees the future sure,?The baffling present may endure,?And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand that leads?The heart's desires beyond the halting step of deeds.
XXVIII.?And thou, my song, I send thee forth,?Where harsher songs of mine have flown;?Go, find a place at home and hearth?Where'er thy singer's name is known;?Revive for him the kindly thought?Of friends; and they who love him not,?Touched by some strain of thine, perchance may take?The hand he proffers all, and thank him for thy sake.?1857.
THE FIRST FLOWERS
For ages on our river borders,?These tassels in their tawny bloom,?And willowy studs of downy silver,?Have prophesied of Spring to come.
For ages have the unbound waters?Smiled on them from their pebbly hem,?And the clear carol of the robin?And song of bluebird welcomed them.
But never yet from smiling river,?Or song of early bird, have they?Been greeted with a gladder welcome?Than whispers from my heart to-day.
They break the spell of cold and darkness,?The weary watch of sleepless pain;?And from my heart, as from the river,?The ice of winter melts again.
Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token?Of Freya's footsteps drawing near;?Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,?The growing of the grass I hear.
It is as if the pine-trees called me?From ceiled room and silent books,?To see the dance of woodland shadows,?And hear the song of April brooks!
As in the old Teutonic ballad?Of Odenwald live bird and tree,?Together live in bloom and music,?I blend in song thy flowers and thee.
Earth's rocky tablets bear forever?The dint of rain and small bird's track?Who knows but that my idle verses?May leave some trace by Merrimac!
The bird that trod the mellow layers?Of the young earth is sought in vain;?The cloud is gone that wove the sandstone,?From God's design, with threads of rain!
So, when this fluid age we live in?Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme,?Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle?The savants of the coming time;
And, following out their dim suggestions,?Some idly-curious hand may draw?My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier?Drew fish and bird from fin and claw.
And maidens in the far-off twilights,?Singing my words to breeze and stream,?Shall wonder if the old-time Mary?Were real, or the rhymer's dream!?1st 3d mo., 1857.
THE OLD BURYING-GROUND.
Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,?Our hills are maple-crowned;?But not from them our fathers chose?The village burying-ground.
The dreariest spot in all the land?To Death they set apart;?With scanty grace from Nature's hand,?And none from that of Art.
A winding wall of mossy stone,?Frost-flung and broken, lines?A lonesome acre thinly grown?With grass and wandering vines.
Without the wall a birch-tree shows?Its drooped and tasselled head;?Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,?Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.
There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain?Like white ghosts come and go,?The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,?The cow-bell tinkles slow.
Low moans the river from its bed,?The distant pines reply;?Like mourners shrinking from the dead,?They stand apart and sigh.
Unshaded smites the summer sun,?Unchecked the winter blast;?The school-girl learns the place to shun,?With glances backward cast.
For thus our fathers testified,?That he might read who ran,?The emptiness of human pride,?The nothingness of man.
They dared not plant the grave with flowers,?Nor dress the funeral sod,?Where, with a love as deep as ours,?They left their dead with God.
The hard and thorny path they kept?From beauty turned aside;?Nor missed they over those who slept?The grace to life denied.
Yet still the wilding flowers would blow,?The golden leaves would fall,?The seasons come, the seasons go,?And God be good to all.
Above the graves the' blackberry hung?In bloom and green its wreath,?And harebells swung as if they rung?The chimes of peace beneath.
The beauty Nature loves to share,?The gifts she hath for all,?The common light, the common air,?O'ercrept the graveyard's wall.
It knew the glow of eventide,?The sunrise and the noon,?And glorified and sanctified?It slept beneath the moon.
With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod,?Around the seasons ran,?And evermore the love of God?Rebuked the fear of man.
We dwell with fears on either hand,?Within a daily strife,?And spectral problems waiting stand?Before the gates of life.
The doubts we vainly seek to solve,?The truths we know, are one;?The known and nameless stars revolve?Around the