Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;
Thou child of joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss-I feel, I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth itself is adorning,
This sweet May morning,
And the children are culling,
In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm; I hear, I hear, with joy I hear, -But there's a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have looked uponBoth of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees in it his joy;
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child,her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See where mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mothers' kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly learnéd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife!
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part:
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage,”
With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, readest the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the eternal mind,
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave:
Thou, over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom, on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live;
That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction; not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence! truths that wake,
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man, nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Whose earthly summers are but three, And yet a voyager is he
Greater than Drake or Frobisher,
Than all the peers together!
He is a brave discoverer,
And, far beyond the tether
Of them who seek the frozen Pole,
Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll.
Aye, he has traveled whither
A wingéd pilot steered his bark
Through the portals of the dark,
Past hoary Mimir's well and tree,
Across the unknown sea.
Suddenly in his fair young hour,
Came one who bore a flower
And laid it in his dimpled hand
With this command:
"Henceforth thou art a rover!
Thou must make a voyage far,
Sail beneath the evening star,
And a wondrous land discover."
-With his sweet smile innocent
Our little kinsman went.
Since that time no word
From the absent has been heard;
Who can tell
How he fares, or answer well
What the little one has found
Since he left us, outward-bound!
Would that he might return!
Then should we learn
From the pricking of his chart
How the skyey roadways part.
Hush! does not the baby this way bring,
To lay beside this severed curl,
Some starry offering
Of chrysolite or pearl?
Ah, no! not so!
We may follow on his track,
But he comes not back.
And yet I dare aver
He is a brave discoverer
Of climes his elders do not know.
He has more learning than appears
On the scroll of twice three thousand years; More than in the groves is taught
Or from furthest Indies brought;
He knows, perchance, how spirits fare-
What shapes the angels wear,
What is their guise and speech
In those lands beyond our reach
And his eyes behold
Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers told. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
OW shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps
The disembodied spirits of the dead,
When all of thee that time could wither sleeps
And perishes among the dust we tread?
For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain
If there I meet thy gentle presence not;
Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.
Will not thy own meek heart demand me there?
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given;
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?
In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind,
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
The love that lived through all the stormy past,
And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last,
Shall it expire with life and be no more?
A happier lot than mine, and larger light,
Await thee there; for thou hast bowed thy will
In cheerful homage to the rule of right,
And lovest all, and renderest good for ill.
For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell
Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll;
And wrath hath left its scar-that fire of hell
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul.
Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky,
Wilt thou not keep the same belovéd name,
The same fair, thoughtful brow, and gentle eye,
Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same?
Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home,
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this-
The wisdom which is love-till I become
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss?
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
HERE is no death! The stars go down
To rise upon some fairer shore,
And bright in heaven's jeweled crown
They shine forevermore.
There is no death. The dust we tread
Shall change beneath the summer showers
To golden grain or mellow fruit
Or rainbow-tinted flowers.
The granite rocks disorganize
To feed the hungry moss they bear; The forest leaves drink daily life From out the viewless air.
There is no death; the leaves may fall, The flowers may fade and pass awayThey only wait through wintry hours The coming of the May.
There is no death! An angel form
Walks o'er the earth with silent tread; He bears our best-loved things away,
And then we call them "dead."
He leaves our hearts all desolate
He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers; Transplanted into bliss, they now Adorn immortal bowers.
Christian, God speed thee!
Let loose the rudder-bands-
Good angels lead thee!
Set thy sails warily,
Tempests will come;
Steer thy course steadily;
Christian, steer home!
Look to the weather-bow,
Breakers are round thee;
Let fall the plummet now,
Shallows may ground thee.
Reef in the foresail, there!
Hold the helm fast!
So let the vessel wear-
There swept the blast.
"What of the night, watchman?
What of the night?"
"Cloudy-all quiet-
No land yet all 's right."
Be wakeful, be vigilant
Danger may be
At an hour when all seemeth
Securest to thee.
How! gains the leak so fast?
Clean out the hold —
Hoist up the merchandise,
Heave out thy gold;
There-let the ingots go-
Now the ship rights;
Hurrah! the harbor 's near —
Lo! the red lights!
Slacken not sail yet
At inlet or island;
Straight for the beacon steer,
Straight for the highland;
Crowd all thy canvas on,
Cut through the foam-
Christian, cast anchor now,
Heaven is thy home!
CAROLINE BOWLES SOUTHEY.
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