The shadows shake on the rock behind,
And the countless leaves of the pine are strings
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.

Hearken! Hearken!

If thou wouldst know the mystic song
Chanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, abroad, the pæan swells;

O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells?

O wise man! hear'st thou the least part? 'Tis the chronicle of art.

To the open ear it sings

Sweet the genesis of things,'

Of tendency through endless ages,

Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,

Of rounded worlds, of space and time,
Of the old flood's subsiding slime,

Of chemic matter, force and form,

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:
The rushing metamorphosis

Dissolving all that fixture is,

Melts things that be to things that seem,

And solid nature to a dream.2

O, listen to the undersong,
The ever old, the ever young;

And, far within those cadent pauses,

The chorus of the ancient Causes!
Delights the dreadful Destiny

To fling his voice into the tree,

And shock thy weak ear with a note

Breathed from the everlasting throat.
In music he repeats the pang

Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.

O mortal! thy ears are stones;
These echoes are laden with tones
Which only the pure can hear;

Thou canst not catch what they recite
Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,
Of man to come, of human life,

Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.'

Once again the pine-tree sung: -
'Speak not thy speech my boughs among:
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze;
My hours are peaceful centuries.
Talk no more with feeble tongue;
No more the fool of space and time,
Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme.
Only thy Americans

Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,
But the runes that I rehearse

Understands the universe;

The least breath my boughs which tossed
Brings again the Pentecost;

To every soul resounding clear

In a voice of solemn cheer,

"Am I not thine? Are not these thine?"

And they reply, "Forever mine!"

My branches speak Italian,

English, German, Basque, Castilian,
Mountain speech to Highlanders,
Ocean tongues to islanders,

To Fin and Lap and swart Malay,
To each his bosom-secret say.

• Come learn with me the fatal song Which knits the world in music strong, Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,

Of things with things, of times with times,
Primal chimes of sun and shade,

Of sound and echo, man and maid,
The land reflected in the flood,

Body with shadow still pursued.'

For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,

But it carves the bow of beauty there,

And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.'

The wood is wiser far than thou;

The wood and wave each other know

Not unrelated, unaffied,

But to each thought and thing allied,

Is perfect Nature's every part,

Rooted in the mighty Heart.

But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed,

Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed,
Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded?
Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded ?
Who thee divorced, deceived and left?
Thee of thy faith who hath bereft,
And torn the ensigns from thy brow,
And sunk the immortal eye so low?

Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,
Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender

For royal man; - they thee confess
An exile from the wilderness, —

The hills where health with health agrees,
And the wise soul expels disease.
Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign
By which thy hurt thou may'st divine.
When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff,
Or see the wide shore from thy skiff,
To thee the horizon shall express
But emptiness on emptiness;

There lives no man of Nature's worth
In the circle of the earth;

And to thine eye the vast skies fall,
Dire and satirical,

On clucking hens and prating fools,
On thieves, on drudges and on dolls.
And thou shalt say to the Most High,
"Godhead! all this astronomy,
And fate and practice and invention,
Strong art and beautiful pretension,

This radiant pomp of sun and star,
Throes that were, and worlds that are,
Behold! were in vain and in vain; I

It cannot be, I will look again.

-

Surely now will the curtain rise,
And earth's fit tenant me surprise ;
But the curtain doth not rise,

And Nature has miscarried wholly
Into failure, into folly."

Alas! thine is the bankruptcy,
Blessed Nature so to see.

Come, lay thee in my soothing shade,
And heal the hurts which sin has made.

I see thee in the crowd alone;

I will be thy companion.

Quit thy friends as the dead in doom,
And build to them a final tomb;
Let the starred shade that nightly falls
Still celebrate their funerals,
And the bell of beetle and of bee
Knell their melodious memory.
Behind thee leave thy merchandise,
Thy churches and thy charities;
And leave thy peacock wit behind;
Enough for thee the primal mind

That flows in streams, that breathes in wind:

Leave all thy pedant lore apart;

God hid the whole world in thy heart.