Heard rendings of the skyey roof,
And felt, beneath, the quaking ground;
And his air-sown, unheeded words,
In the next age, are flaming swords.

In newer days of war and trade,
Romance forgot, and faith decayed,
When Science armed and guided war,
And clerks the Janus-gates unbar,
When France, where poet never grew,
Halved and dealt the globe anew,
Göthe, raised o'er joy and strife,
Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life,
And brought Olympian wisdom down
To court and mart, to gown and town;
Stooping, his finger wrote in clay
The open secret of to-day.

So bloom the unfading petals five, And verses that all verse outlive.

SONG OF NATURE.

MINE are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hide in the solar glory,

I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill;
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And, ever by delicate powers

Gathering along the centuries

From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms

They swathed their too-much power.

Time and thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well;

They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Of granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,-
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide for ever run?

Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,

Too slow the rainbow fades,

I weary of my robe of snow,

My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,

Too long the game is played; What without him is summer's pomp, Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,

My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,

And thrice outstretched my hand; Made one of day, and one of night, And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judean manger,

And one by Avon stream,

One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule;-
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;

Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,

Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race;

The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn;
My oldest force is good as new;
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn

Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

TWO RIVERS.

THY summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit

Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet,

I hear the spending of the stream

Through years, through men, through nature fleet,

Through passion, thought, through power and dream.

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,

Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream,—
Who drinks it shall not thirst again;
No darkness stains its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain.

TERMINUS.

It is time to be old,

To take in sail:

The god of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: "No more!

No farther spread

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.

There's not enough for this and that;
Make thy option which of two.
Economize the failing river;

Not the less revere the Giver;
Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while

Still plan and smile,

And, fault of novel germs,

Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,
Who, when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,
The Baresark marrow to thy bones,
But left a legacy of ebbing veins,
Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,-
Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb."

As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime. "Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unarmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed."