Chapter III

Out there where the great, green book,
Whose leaves are the grass and trees,
Lies open; where each may look,
May muse and read as he please;
The book, that is gilt with gleams,
Whose pages are ribboned with streams;
That says what our souls would say
Of beauty that’s wrought of dreams
And buds and blossoms of May.

A WET DAY

Dark, drear, and drizzly, with vapor grizzly,
The day goes dully unto its close;
Its wet robe smutches each thing it touches,
Its fingers sully and wreck the rose.

Around the railing and garden-paling
The dripping lily hangs low its head:
A brood-mare whinnies; and hens and guineas
Droop, damp and chilly, beneath the shed.

In splashing mire about the byre
The cattle huddle, the farm-hand plods;
While to some neighbor’s a wagon labors
Through pool and puddle and clay that clods.

The day, unsplendid, at last is ended,
Is dead and buried, and night has come;--
Night, blind and footless, and foul and fruitless,
With weeping wearied, and sorrow-dumb.

Ah, God! for thunder! for winds to sunder
The clouds and o’er us smite rushing bars!
And through wild masses of storm, that passes,
Roll calm the chorus of moon and stars.

AFTER STORM

Great clouds of sullen seal and gold
Bar bleak the tawny west,
From which all day the thunder rolled,
And storm streamed, crest on crest.

Now silvery in its deeps of bronze
The new moon fills its sphere;
And point by point the darkness dons
Its pale stars there and here.

But still behind the moon and stars,
The peace of heaven remains
Suspicion of the wrath that wars,
That Nature now restrains.

As, lined ’neath tiger eyelids, glare
The wild-beast eyes that sleep,
So smoulders in its sunset lair
The rage that rent the deep.

SUNSET ON THE RIVER

I

A sea of onyx are the skies,
Cloud-islanded with fire;
Such nacre-colored flame as dyes
A sea-shell’s rosy spire;
And at its edge one star sinks slow,
Burning, into the overglow.

II

Save for the cricket in the grass,
Or passing bird that twitters,
The world is hushed. Like liquid glass
The soundless river glitters
Between the hills that hug and hold
Its beauty like a hoop of gold.

III

The glory deepens; and, meseems,
A vasty canvas, painted
With revelations of God’s dreams
And visions symbol-sainted,
The west is, that each night-cowled hill
Kneels down before in worship still.