Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil. Your lands, with force or cunning got, TO A PINE-TREE. FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest, In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, When whole mountains swoop valeward. In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring From the city beneath him. To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion, Till he longs to be swung 'mid their booming In the tents of the Arabs of ocean, Whose finned isles are their cattle. For the gale snatches thee for his lyre, Whose arms stretch to his playmate. The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches, Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory, Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter, Thou alone know'st the glory of summer, SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES. O, WANDERING dim on the extremest edge Of God's bright providence, whose spirits sigh Drearily in you, like the winter sedge That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and dry, Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss, With wilted flowers for offering laid across, Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace. How far are ye from the innocent, from those snows, Or in the summer blithe with lamb-cropped green, Save the one track, where naught more rude is seen Than the plump wain at even Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves ! How far are ye from those! yet who believes Your souls partake its influence, not in vain Looking within myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Where ye grope darkly,-ye who never knew Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue! One band ye cannot break,—the force that clips The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes; By bigot feet polluted ; Yet they who watch your God-compelled return May see your happy perihelion burn Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods. |