Through ways unlooked for and through many lands, Far from the rich folds built with human hands,

The gracious footprints of his love I trace.

And what art thou, own brother of the clod,
That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away,
And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod,

To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day?
Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew,

That with thy idol-volume's covers two
Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God?

Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tones
By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught,
Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains
Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought,
Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire,
Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire

To weld anew the spirit's broken chains.

God is not dumb, that he should speak no more;
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness

And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor;

There towers the mountain of the Voice no less,
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,
Intent on manna still and mortal ends,

Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,

And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,

Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,

While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud,

Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.

BEAVER BROOK.

HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill,

And, minuting the long day's loss,

The cedar's shadow, slow and still,

Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.

Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, The aspen's leaves are scarce astir, Only the little mill sends up

Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems The road along the mill-pond's brink, From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, My footstep scares the shy chewink.

Beneath a bony buttonwood

The mill's red door swings open wide;

The whitened miller, dust-imbued,

Flits past the square of dark, inside.

No mountain torrent's strength is here;
Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,

Heaps its small pitcher to the ear,

And gently waits the miller's will.

Swift slips Undine along the race
Unheard, and then, with flashing bound,
Floods the dull wheel with light and grace,
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.

The miller dreams not at what cost
The quivering mill-stones hum and whirl,

Nor how, for every turn, are tost
Armfulls of diamond and of pearl.

But Summer cleared my happier eyes
With drops of some celestial juice,

To see how beauty underlies
For evermore each form of use.

And more: methought I saw that flood
Which now so dull and darkling steals,
Thick, here and there, with human blood
To turn the world's laborious wheels.

No more than doth the miller there,
Shut in our several cells, do we

Know with what waste of beauty rare

Moves every day's machinery.

Surely the wiser time shall come

When this fine overplus of might,
No longer sullen, slow, and dumb,
Shall leap to music and to light.

In that new childhood of the world

Life of itself shall dance and play,

Fresh blood through Time's shrunk veins be hurled, And labor meet delight half-way.