63

A FOREST HYMN.

E'er wore his crown as loftily as he

Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me, the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die; but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses, ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost.
One of Earth's charms! upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,

And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch-enemy Death, yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne, the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves

Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived

The generation born with them, nor seemed

Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks

Around them; and there have been holy men

Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble, and are still. O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods.
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms

Its cities, who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?

Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

THE morning hath not lost her virgin blush,

Nor step but mine soiled the earth's tinselled robe.
How full of heaven this solitude appears,

This healthful comfort of the happy swain;

Who from his hard but peaceful bed roused up,

In's morning exercise saluted is

By a full choir of feathered choristers,

Wedding their notes to the enamored air!

Here Nature in her unaffected dress

Plaited with valleys, and embossed with hills,

Enchased with silver streams, and fringed with woods, Sits lovely in her native russet.

5

WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE.

THE FOUNTAIN.

INTO the sunshine,

Full of light,

Leaping and flashing From morn till night!

Into the moonlight,

Whiter than snow,

Waving so flower-like

When the winds blow!

Into the starlight

Rushing in spray;

Happy at midnight,

Happy by day!

Ever in motion,

Blithesome and cheery,

Still climbing heavenward,

Never aweary:

Glad of all weathers,

Still seeming best, Upward or downward,

Motion thy rest;