STAND here by my side and turn, I pray, On the lake below thy gentle eyes; The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, And dark and silent the water lies; And out of that frozen mist the snow In wavering flakes begins to flow; Flake after flake
They sink in the dark and silent lake.
See how in a living swarm they come From the chambers beyond that misty veil; Some hover awhile in air, and some
Rush prone from the sky like summer hail. All, dropping swiftly or settling slow, Meet, and are still in the depths below; Flake after flake
Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.
Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud, Come floating downward in airy play, Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd That whiten by night the Milky Way; There broader and burlier masses fall; The sullen water buries them all,
Flake after flake, All drowned in the dark and silent lake.
And some, as on tender wings they glide From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray, Are joined in their fall, and, side by side,
Come clinging along their unsteady way; As friend with friend, or husband with wife, Makes hand in hand the passage of life; Each mated flake
Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.
Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste Stream down the snows, till the air is white,
As, myriads by myriads madly chased,
They fling themselves from their shadowy
The fair, frail creatures of middle sky,
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression, Even as the troubled heart doth make In the white countenance confession, The troubled sky reveals The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
What speed they make, with their grave so nigh; This is the secret of despair,
To lie in the dark and silent lake!
I see in thy gentle eyes a tear;
They turn to me in sorrowful thought; Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear, Who were for a time, and now are not; Like these fair children of cloud and frost, That glisten a moment and then are lost, Flake after flake,
All lost in the dark and silent lake.
Yet look again, for the clouds divide; A gleam of blue on the water lies; And far away, on the mountain-side,
A sunbeam falls from the opening skies.
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded, Now whispered and revealed To wood and field.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
SCENE IN A VERMONT WINTER
'T Is a fearful night in the winter time,
As cold as it ever can be ; The roar of the blast is heard like the chime Of the waves on an angry sea.
He has given the last faint jerk of the rein, To rouse up his dying steed;
And the poor dog howls to the blast in vain For help in his master's need.
For a while he strives with a wistful cry To catch a glance from his drowsy eye, And wags his tail if the rude winds flap The skirt of the buffalo over his lap, And whines when he takes no heed.
The wind goes down and the storm is o'er, "T is the hour of midnight, past; The old trees writhe and bend no more
O WINTER, WILT THOU NEVER GO!
O WINTER! wilt thou never, never go? O summer! but I weary for thy coming, Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow, And frugal bees, laboriously humming. Now the east-wind diseases the infirm, And must crouch in corners from rough weather; Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm, When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together, And the large sun dips red behind the hills. I, from my window, can behold this pleasure; And the eternal moon what time she fills Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure, With queenly motions of a bridal mood, Through the white spaces of infinitude.
FROM "HYMN ON THE SEASONS." THESE, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Forth in the pleasing spring
Is full of thee. Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
| Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to him; Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart, As home he goes beneath the joyous moon. Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams, Ye constellations, while your angels strike, Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre. Great source of day! best image here below Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide, From world to world, the vital ocean round, On Nature write with every beam his praise. The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm ; | In mingled clouds to him, - whose sun exalts, Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil And every sense and every heart is joy. Then comes thy glory in the summer months, With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year; And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks, And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, By brooks and groves in hollow-whispering gales. Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined, And spreads a common feast for all that lives. In winter awful thou! with clouds and storms Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled, Majestic darkness! On the whirlwind's wing Riding sublime, thou bid'st the world adore, And humblest nature with thy northern blast. Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine, Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train, Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art, Such beauty and beneficence combined; Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade ; And all so forming an harmonious whole, That, as they still succeed, they ravish still. But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze, Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand, That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ; Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring; Flings from the sun direct the flaming day; Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth; And, as on earth this grateful change revolves, With transport touches all the springs of life. Nature, attend! join every living soul, Beneath the spacious temple of the sky, In adoration join; and, ardent, raise One general song! To Him, ye vocal gales, Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness
O, talk of him in solitary glooms!
While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn. Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound; the broad responsive low, Ye valleys, raise; for the great Shepherd reigns, And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come. Ye woodlands all, awake: a boundless song Burst from the groves; and when the restless day, Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep, Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charm The listening shades, and teach the night his praise.
Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles, At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all, Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast, Assembled men to the deep organ join
The long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear, At solemn pauses, through the swelling bass; And, as each mingling flame increases each, In one united ardor rise to heaven. Or if you rather choose the rural shade, And find a fane in every sacred grove, There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay, The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre, Still sing the God of seasons as they roll. For me, when I forget the darling theme, Whether the blossom blows, the summer ray Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams,
Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine Fills the brown shade with a religious awe. And ye whose bolder note is heard afar, Who shake the astonished world, lift high to Or winter rises in the blackening east,
The impetuous song, and say from whom you
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills; And let me catch it as I muse along. Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound; Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze Along the vale; and thou, majestic main, A secret world of wonders in thyself,
Be my tongue mute,- my fancy paint no more, And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!
Should fate command me to the farthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles, - 't is naught to me: Since God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste as in the city full;
Sound his stupendous praise, whose greater And where he vital spreads there must be joy.
Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
When even at last the solemn hour shall come, And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I cheerful will obey; there, with new powers, Will rising wonders sing: I cannot go Where Universal Love not smiles around, Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns; From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still, In infinite progression. But I lose Myself in him, in light ineffable!
The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent.
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag wavering to and fro
Come, then, expressive Silence, muse his praise. Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow :
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began, So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old,
The Child is father of the Man And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
NEW ENGLAND IN WINTER. FROM "SNOW-BOUND."
THE sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
And ere the early bed-time came
The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature's geometric signs,
In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below, A universe of sky and snow! The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden wall, or belt of wood ;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road; The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; The well-curb had a Chinese roof; And even the long sweep, high aloof, In its slant splendor, seemed to tell Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
A prompt, decisive man, no breath Our father wasted: " Boys, a path!" Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy Count such a summons less than joy?) Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, To guard our necks and ears from snow, We cut the solid whiteness through. And, where the drift was deepest, made A tunnel walled and overlaid With dazzling crystal: we had read Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, And to our own his name we gave, With many a wish the luck were ours To test his lamp's supernal powers. We reached the barn with merry din, And roused the prisoned brutes within. The old horse thrust his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about; The cock his lusty greeting said, And forth his speckled harem led; The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, And mild reproach of hunger looked; The hornéd patriarch of the sheep, Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, Shook his sage head with gesture mute, And emphasized with stamp of foot.
All day the gusty north-wind bore The loosening drift its breath before; Low circling round its southern zone, The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. No church-bell lent its Christian tone To the savage air, no social smoke Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. A solitude made more intense By dreary-voiced elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind, The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, And on the glass the unmeaning beat Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. Beyond the circle of our hearth No welcome sound of toil or mirth Unbound the spell, and testified Of human life and thought outside. We minded that the sharpest ear The buried brooklet could not hear, The music of whose liquid lip Had been to us companionship, And, in our lonely life, had grown To have an almost human tone. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled, with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back, The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then, hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old, rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became, And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed, The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle, Whispered the old rhyme :
When fire outdoors burns merrily, There the witches are muking tea."
The moon above the eastern wood Shone at its full; the hill-range stood Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, Dead white, save where some sharp ravine Took shadow, or the sombre green Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black Against the whiteness at their back. For such a world and such a night Most fitting that unwarming light, Which only seemed where'er it fell To make the coldness visible.
Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about. Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
SEE how the orient dew, Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
(Yet careless of its mansion new For the clear region where 't was born) Round in itself encloses,
And in its little globe's extent Frames, as it can, its native element. How it the purple flower does slight, Scarce touching where it lies; But gazing back upon the skies, Shines with a mournful light,
Because so long divided from the sphere; Restless it rolls, and unsecure,
Trembling, lest it grow impure; Till the warm sun pities its pain,
« AnteriorContinuar » |