MISCELLANEOUS. SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE. 1. NOON. Transfused through you, O mountain friends! With mine your solemn spirit blends, I read each misty mountain sign, Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, O, welcome calm of heart and mind! So fall the weary years away; This western windhath Lethean powers, That Shadow blends with mountain gray, It speaks but what the light waves say,- Rocked on her breast, these pines and I The simple faith remains, that He What mosses over one shall grow, II. EVENING. Yon mountain's side is black with night, While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming crown The moon, slow-rounding into sight, On the hushed inland sea looks down. How start to light the clustering isles, Each silver-hemmned! How sharply show The shadows of their rocky piles, How far and strange the mountains scem, Dim-looming through the pale, still light! The vague, vast grouping of a dream, They stretch into the solemn night. Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale. Hushed by that presence grand and grave, Are silent, save the cricket's wail, And low response of leaf and wave. THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID. Fair scenes! whereto the Day and Night Make rival love, I leave ye soon, What time before the eastern light The pale ghost of the setting moon Shall hide behind yon rocky spines, And the young archer, Morn, shall break His arrows on the mountain pines, And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake! Farewell! around this smiling bay Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom, With lighter steps than mine, may stray In radiant summers yet to come. But none shall more regretful leave These waters and these hills than I : Or, distant, fouder dream how eve Or dawn is painting wave and sky; How rising moons shine sad and mild On wooded isle and silvering bay; Or setting suns beyond the piled And purple mountains lead the day; Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy, Still waits kind Nature to impart Her choicest gifts to such as gain O, watched by Silence and the Night, 225 THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID. O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith, From pastoral toil, from traffic's din, Ye brook no forced and measured tasks, For man the living temple is: The mercy seat and cherubim, And all the holy mysteries, He bears with him. And most avails the prayer of love, Which, wordless, shapes itself in deeds, And wearies Heaven for naught above Our common needs. Which brings to God's all-perfect will And, seeking not for special signs Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned At noontime o'er the sacred word. Was it an angel or a fiend Whose voice he heard? It broke the desert's hush of awe, A human utterance, sweet and mild; And, looking up, the hermit saw A little child. A child, with wonder-widened eyes, O'erawed and troubled by the sight Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies, And anchorite. BURNS. BURNS. ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM. No more these simple flowers belong In smiles and tears, in sun and show ers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of live together. Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns! The gray sky wears again its gold The dews that washed the dust and soil I call to mind the summer day, How oft that day, with fond delay, Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead I heard the squirrels leaping, I watched him while in sportive mood 227 Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing, From brook and bird and meadow flowers A dearer welcome bringing. New light on home-seen beamed, New glory over Woman; And daily life and duty seemed No longer poor and common. Nature I woke to find the simple truth That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, In every tongue rehearsing. Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, I saw through all familiar things I saw the same blithe day return, I matched with Scotland's heathery hills The child of God's baptizing! |