Chapter III

They are the curs’d! the souls who yearn and evermore pursue
The vision of a vain desire, a splendor far ahead;
To whom God gives the poet’s dream without the grasp to do,
The artist’s hope without the scope between the quick and dead:--

I, too, am weary toiling where
The winds and waters beat;
When shall I ease the oar I bear
And rest my tired feet?
When will the white moons cease to glare,
The red suns veil their heat?
And from the heights blow sweet the air
Of Love’s divine retreat?

SUNSET AND STORM

Deep with divine tautology,
The sunset’s mighty mystery
Again has traced the scroll-like west
With hieroglyphs of burning gold:
Forever new, forever old,
Its miracle is manifest.

Time lays the scroll away. And now
Above the hills a giant brow
Night lifts of cloud; and from her arm,
Barbaric black, upon the world,
With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled
Her awful argument of storm.

What part, O man, is yours in such?
Whose awe and wonder are in touch
With Nature,--speaking rapture to
Your soul,--yet leaving in your reach
No human word of thought or speech
Expressive of the thing you view.

BEECH BLOOMS

Among the valleys
The wild oxalis
Lifts up its chalice
Of pink and pearl;
And, balsam-breathing
From out their sheathing,
The myriad wreathing
Green leaves uncurl.

The whole world brightens
With spring, that lightens
The foot that frightens
The building thrush;
Where water tosses
On ferns and mosses
The squirrel crosses
The beechen hush.

And vision on vision,--
Like ships elysian
On some white mission,--
Sails cloud on cloud;
With scents of clover
The winds brim over,
And in the cover
The stream is loud.

’Twixt bloom that blanches
The orchard branches
Old farms and ranches
Gleam in the gloam:
Through fields for sowing,
’Mid blossoms blowing,
The cows come lowing,
The cows come home.

Where ways are narrow,
A vesper-sparrow
Flits like an arrow
Of living rhyme;
The red sun poises,
And farm-yard noises
Mix with glad voices
Of milking-time.

When dusk disposes
Of all its roses,
And darkness closes,
And work is done,
A moon’s white feather
In starry weather
And two together
Whose hearts are one.

WORSHIP

I

The mornings raise
Voices of gold in the Almighty’s praise;
The sunsets soar
In choral crimson from far shore to shore:
Each is a blast,
Reverberant, of color,--seen as vast
Concussions,--that the vocal firmament
In worship sounds o’er every continent.