Till it possessed me wholly, and thought ceased, Or was transfused in something to which thought Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost, Gone from me like an ache, and what remained Become a part of the universal joy. the tree, Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud, Saw its white double in the stream below; Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, The tide that crept with coolness to its . roots, The thin-winged swallow skating on the air; The life that gladdened everything was mine. Was I then truly all that I beheld? Across the river's hollow heaven below saine? -- But suddenly the sound of human voice Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours, Doth in opacous cloud precipitate Into an essence rarer than its own, For here not long is solitude secure, Rippled with western winds, the dusty Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food And munch an unearned meal. I can. Himself his large estate and only charge, | Between the branches of the tree fixed To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, Nobly superior to the household gear That forfeits us our privilege of nature. I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, His equal now, divinely unemployed. Some snack of Robin Hood is in the still with them Kind Fancy plays the fairy godmother, Strewing their lives with cheap material For winged horses and Aladdin's lamps, Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch profane seats, Making an o'erturned box their table. Oft The shrilling girls sit here between school hours, And play at What's my thought like? while the boys, With whom the age chivalric ever bides, Pricked on by knightly spur of female Here, too, the men that mend our village ways, Vexing Macadam's ghost with pounded slate, Their nooning tuke; much noisy talk they spend On horses and their ills; and, as John Bull Tells of Lord This or That, who was his friend, So these make boast of intimacies long With famous teams, and add large estimates, By competition swelled from mouth to mouth, Of how much they could draw, till one, ill pleased To have his legend overbid, retorts: "You take and stretch truck-horses in a string From here to Long Wharf end, one thing I know, Not heavy neither, they could never draw, Ensign's long bow!" Then laughter loud and long. So they in their leaf-shadowed micro cosm Image the larger world; for wheresoe'er To dead leaves disenchanted, — long ago | In the small welkin of a drop of dew. O, benediction of the higher mood And human-kindness of the lower! for both I will be grateful while I live, nor question The wisdom that hath made us what we are, With such large range as from the alehouse bench Can reach the stars and be with both at home. They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast Where gods and heroes took delight of old; But though our lives, moving in one dull round Of repetition infinite, become Stale as a newspaper once read, and though History herself, seen in her workshop, seem To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes, Rich with memorial shapes of saint and sage, That pave with splendor the Past's dusky aisles, Panes that enchant the light of common day With colors costly as the blood of kings, Till with ideal hues it edge our thought, Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts, And man the best of nature, there shall be Somewhere contentment for these human hearts, Some freshness, some unused material For wonder and for song. I lose myself In other ways where solemn guide-posts say, This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose, But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed, For every by-path leads me to my love. God's passionless reformers, influences, That purify and heal and are not seen, Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how Ye make medicinal the wayside weed? I know that sunshine, through whatever | Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden rift So mused I once within my willow-tent One brave June morning, when the bluff northwest, Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins, bridge Thundered, and then was silent; on the roofs The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat; Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain, All life washed clean in this high tide of June. DARA. WHEN Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand Wilted with harem-heats, and all the land Was hovered over by those vulture ills That snuff decaying empire from afar, Then, with a nature balanced as a star, Dara arose, a shepherd of the hills. He who had governed fleecy subjects well Made his own village by the selfsame spell Secure and quiet as a guarded fold; Then, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees Under his sway, to neighbor villages Order returned, and faith and justice old. Brimmed the great cup of heaven with Now when it fortuned that a king more sparkling cheer And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles, Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue, Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes Look once and look no more, with southward curve Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold; From blossom-clouded orchards, far away The bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows flowed With multitudinous pulse of light and shade wise Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes, He sought on every side men brave and just; And having heard our mountain shep- So Dara shepherded a province wide, Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more pride Than in his crook before; but envy finds More food in cities than on mountains bare; And the frank sun of natures clear and rare Against the bases of the southern hills, Soon it was hissed into the royal ear, That, though wise Dara's province, year by year, Like a great sponge, sucked wealth and plenty up, Yet, when he squeezed it at the king's behest, Some yellow drops, more rich than all the rest, Went to the filling of his private cup. For proof, they said, that, wheresoe'er he went, A chest, beneath whose weight the camel bent, Went with him; and no mortal eye had seen What was therein, save only Dara's own; But, when 't was opened, all his tent was known "For ruling wisely I should have small skill, Were I not lord of simple Dara still; That sceptre kept, I could not lose my way." Strange dew in royal eyes grew round and bright, And strained the throbbing lids; before 't was night Two added provinces blest Dara's sway. THE FIRST SNOW-FALL. THE snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. To glow and lighten with heaped jewels' Every pine and fir and hemlock sheen. Was found therein. Some blushed and hung the head; Not Dara; open as the sky's blue roof He stood, and "O my lord, behold the proof That I was faithful to my trust," he said. "To govern men, lo all the spell I had! My soul in these rude vestments ever clad Still to the unstained past kept true and leal, Still on these plains could breathe her mountain air, And fortune's heaviest gifts serenely bear, Which bend men from their truth and make them reel. Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow. I stood and watched by the window I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood. Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, "Father, who makes it snow ?" And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below. Again I looked at the snow-fall, And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high. I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar that renewed our woe. |