The waves, unashamèd, In difference sweet, Play glad with the breezes, Öld playfellows meet; The journeying atoms, Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive, By their animate poles.
'Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,—
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;.
Night veileth the morning, The vapour the hill.
"The babe by its mother Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,— The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies.
"But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an accomplice, He poisons the ground.
"Out spoke the great mother, Beholding his fear;-
At the sound of her accents Cold shuddered the sphere :-
'Who has drugged my boy's cup? Who has mixed my boy's bread? Who, with sadness and madness, Has turned my child's head?
I heard a poet answer, Aloud and cheerfully,
"Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time; They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.
"To vision profounder, Man's spirit must dive; His aye-rolling orb
At no goal will arrive ; The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold,
Once found,-for new heavens He spurneth the old.
Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores; Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free ?—
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
"Eterne alternation Now follows, now flies; And under pain, pleasure,- Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway; Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day.
"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits; Thy sight is growing blear; Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx, Her muddy eyes to clear!"- The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,—
Said, “Who taught thee me to name ? I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh ;
And each answer. is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity; Time is the false reply."
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon ; She spired into a yellow flame; She flowered in blossoms red; She flowed into a foaming wave; She stood Monadnoc's head.
Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame: Who telleth one of my meanings, Is master of all I am."
ITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent, All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things.
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage ;
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of youth: As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;- Beauty through my senses stole ; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
LIKE a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure ?
Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,- The canticles of love and woe : The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
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