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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.
My soul went forth, and, mingling with

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,
Dilated in the broad blue over all.
I was the wind that dappled the lush
grass,

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?
Or is this stream of being but a glass
Where the mind sees its visionary self,
As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his
bay,

Across the river's hollow heaven below
His picture flits, another, yet the

saine?

--

But suddenly the sound of human voice Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours,

Doth in opacous cloud precipitate
The consciousness that seemed but now
dissolved

Into an essence rarer than its own,
And I am narrowed to myself once more.

For here not long is solitude secure,
Nor Fantasy left vacant to her spell.
Here, sometimes, in this paradise of
shade,

Rippled with western winds, the dusty
Tramp,

Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food

And munch an unearned meal. I can.

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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

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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

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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
Ten men are gathered, the observant eye
Will find mankind in little, as the stars
Glide up and set, and all the heaven
revolve

To dead leaves disenchanted, — long ago | In the small welkin of a drop of dew.

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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

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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-
How he refilled the mould of elder days,
herd's praise,
To Dara gave a satrapy in trust.

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,
While here and there a drowsy island Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish

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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.

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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
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

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.

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