But if the mind Be inclined To unquietness, That only may be called The worst of all distress. He that is melancholy, Were he possessed of honors, Fly away; But those that are contented However things do fall, Much anguish is prevented, A SWEET PASTORAL. 707 Into some other fashion doth it range; Thus goes the floating world beneath the moon; Wherefore, my mind, above time, motion, place, Rise up, and steps unknown to nature trace. A GOOD that never satisfies the mind, A beauty fading like the April showers, A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined, A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours, A honor that more fickle is than wind, A glory at opinion's frown that lowers, A treasury which bankrupt time devours, A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind, A vain delight our equals to command, A style of greatness in effect a dream, A swelling thought of holding sea and land, A servile lot, decked with a pompous name: Are the strange ends we toil for here below Till wisest death makes us our errors know. WILLIAM DRUMMOND. A Sweet Pastoral. GOOD muse, rock me asleep With some sweet harmony! The weary eye is not to keep Thy wary company. Sweet love, begone a while! Thou know'st my heaviness; Beauty is born but to beguile My heart of happiness. See how my little flock, That loved to feed on high, Do headlong tumble down the rock, And in the valley die. The bushes and the trees, That were so fresh and green, Do all their dainty color lease, And not a leaf is seen. Sweet Philomel, the bird That hath the heavenly throat, Doth now, alas! not once afford Recording of a note. WHO gave thee, O beauty, Lavish, lavish promiser, The acorn's cup, the rain-drop's are, To hide or to shun Hath granted His throne! As fate refuses To me the heart fate for me chooses. I hear the lofty paans Of the masters of the shell, Olympian bards who sung Which always find us young, Oft, in streets or humblest places, Thee gliding through the sea of form, HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 709 Thou eternal fugitive, Hovering over all that live, Filling with thy roseate smell, All that's good and great with thee Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely Thou hast touched for my despair; RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. THE awful shadow of some unseen power Floats, though unseen, among us― visiting As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Like moonbeams, that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Like aught that for its grace may be Spirit of beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim, vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; Why fear, and dream, and death, and birth Such gloom; why man has such a scope No voice from some sublimer world hath ever heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavor — Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever From all we hear and all we see Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds depart Thou messenger of sympathies That wax and wane in lovers' eyes! Thou that to human thought art nourishment, While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed; Wood-Notes. As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace, WOOD-NOTES. So waved the pine-tree through my thought, "WHETHER is better, the gift or the donor? Come to me," Quoth the pine-tree, "I am the giver of honor. And my manure the snow; And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, In summer's scorching glow. "He is great who can live by me. One dry, and one the living tree. It seemed the likeness of their own; Me through trackless thickets led, Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide?' I found the water's bed. The water-courses were my guide; I travelled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry; They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beaver's camp, The foodful waters fed me, And brought me to the lowest land, Unerring to the ocean-sand. The moss upon the forest bark Was pole-star when the night was dark; Supplied me necessary food; When the night and morning lie, A pillow in her greenest field, "What prizes the town and the tower? The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods I give my rafters to his boat, And grant to dwellers with the pine 711 Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, A little while each russet gem Will swell and rise with wonted grace; But when it seeks enlarged supplies, The orphan of the forest dies. Whoso walks in solitude, And inhabiteth the wood, Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, Into that forester shall pass From these companions, power and grace; Clean shall he be, without, within, From the old adhering sin, |