And thus the loiterer's utmost stretch of soul
Climbs the still clouds, or passes those that roll,
And loosed imagination soaring goes
High o'er his home and all his little woes.
A SUMMER EVENING'S MEDITATION.
"One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine."-YOUNG.
"T is past,
the sultry tyrant of the South
Has spent his short-lived rage; more grateful hours
Move silent on; the skies no more repel
The dazzled sight, but, with mild maiden beams
Of tempered lustre, court the cherished eye
To wander o'er their sphere; where, hung aloft,
Dian's bright crescent, like a silver bow,
New strung in heaven, lifts its beamy horns
Impatient for the night, and seems to push
Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines
Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam
Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood
Of softened radiance with her dewy locks.
The shadows spread apace; while meekened Eve,
Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires
Through the Hesperian gardens of the West,
And shuts the gates of Day. "T is now the hour
When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts,
The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth
Of unpierced woods, where wrapt in solid shade
She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,
And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun,
Moves forward and with radiant finger points
To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine,
Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven
Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether
One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling
fires,
And dancing lustres, where the unsteady eye,
Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined
O'er all this field of glories; spacious field,
And worthy of the Master: He whose hand
With hieroglyphics elder than the Nile
Inscribed the mystic tablet; hung on high
To public gaze, and said, Adore, O man!
The finger of thy God. From what pure wells
Of milky light, what soft o'erflowing urn,
Are all these lamps so filled?- these friendly
lamps,
Forever streaming o'er the azure deep
To point our path, and light us to our home.
How soft they slide along their lucid spheres!
And, silent as the foot of Time, fulfil
Their destined courses. Nature's self is hushed,
And but a scattered leaf, which rustles through
The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard
To break the midnight air; though the raised ear,
Intently listening, drinks in every breath.
How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise!
But are they silent all? or is there not
A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain :
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine,
Which must burn on for ages, when the sun
(Fair transitory creature of a day!)
Has closed his golden eye, and, wrapt in shades,
Forgets his wonted journey through the East.
Ye citadels of light, and seats of gods!
Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul,
Revolving periods past, may oft look back,
With recollected tenderness, on all
The various busy scenes she left below,
Its deep-laid projects and its strange events,
As on some fond and doting tale that soothed
Her infant hours, - O, be it lawful now
To tread the hallowed circle of your courts,
And with mute wonder and delighted awe
Approach your burning confines.
Have the broad eyelids of the morn beheld thee?!
Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion
Support thy throne? O, look with pity down
On erring, guilty man; not in thy names
Of terror clad; not with those thunders arined
That conscious Sinai felt, when fear appalled
The scattered tribes; thou hast a gentler voice,
That whispers comfort to the swelling heart,
Abashed, yet longing to behold her Maker!
But now my soul, unused to stretch her powers
In flight so daring, drops her weary wing,
And seeks again the known accustomed spot,
Drest up with sun and shade and lawns and
streams,
A mansion fair and spacious for its guests,
And all replete with wonders. Let me here,
Content and grateful, wait the appointed time,
And ripen for the skies: the hour will come
When all these splendors bursting on my sight
Shall stand unveiled, and to my ravished sense
Unlock the glories of the world unknown.
And the day has no morning;
Cold winter gives warning.
The rivers run chill;
The red sun is sinking;
And I am grown old,
And life is fast shrinking;
Here's enow for sad thinking!
THE warm sun is failing; the bleak wind is wailing;
The bare boughs are sighing; the pale flowers are dying;
On the earth, her death-bed, in shroud of leaves dead,
Come, months, come away,
From November to May;
In your saddest array
Follow the bier
Of the dead, cold Year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
THE latter rain, - it falls in anxious haste
Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare,
Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste
As if it would each root's lost strength repair;
But not a blade grows green as in the spring;
No swelling twig puts forth its thickening leaves; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards
The robins only mid the harvests sing,
So shall the truant bluebirds backward fly, And all loved things that vanish or that die
No morn- no noon
No dawn- no dust
no proper time of day --
No sky no earthly view
No distance looking blue
no street- -no "t'other side the way".
No end to any Row
No indications where the Crescents goNo top to any steeple – No recognitions of familiar people — No courtesies for showing 'em
No travelling at all no locomotion, No inkling of the way- no notion
No news from any foreign coast-
-no ring- no afternoon gentility -
No company
-no nobility-
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member-
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!
FROM THE WINTER MORNING WALK.'
'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing,
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves
To seize the fair occasion. Well they eye
The scattered grain, and thievishly resolved
To escape the impending famine, often scared
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray | As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tingeing all with his own rosy hue,
From every herb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportioned limb
Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,
As they designed to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plastered wall,
Preposterous sight! the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,
And, fledged with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not, like hungering man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And, patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load,
Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass :
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned
The cheerful haunts of men, to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy and lean and shrewd with pointed ears,
And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.
Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale,
Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side,
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned
To sad necessity, the cock foregoes
His wonted strut, and, wading at their head
With well-considered steps, seems to resent
His altered gait and stateliness retrenched.
How find the myriads, that in summer cheer
The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs,
Due sustenance, or where subsist they now?
Earth yields them naught; the imprisoned worm
is safe
Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs
Lie covered close; and berry-bearing thorns,
That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose),
Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.
The long protracted rigor of the year
Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and
Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,
As instinct prompts; self-buried ere they die.
WINTER WALK AT NOON.
THE night was winter in his roughest mood,
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast,
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue
Without a cloud, and white without a speck
The dazzling splendor of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale;
And through the trees I view the embattled tower,
Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms,
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half sup-
pressed:
Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendent drops of ice,
That tinkle in the withered leaves below.
|