The Autumn Garden :: :: University of Virginia Library

Deep in high woods, where none pass by,
Strange fancies haunt the ear and eye,
And human forms are inly seen
Where human foot hath seldom been:
So, to my restless thought to-day,
Grows populous the woodland gray—
Young, stalwart, silent warriors these
Battalions of beleaguering trees;
Each living bole, awakened, lifts
Toward golden cloud and azure rifts
Slim, slippery limbs, but lately curl'd
In coverts of the savage world,
Each naked, with its silver guard,
Soft skin, and muscle folded hard.

So dreamed I, with that army round
Of forms alert, and—ne'er a sound.

Then as I lay across the bed
Of cold moss temper'd to my head,
I sang: “O million shafts of pines,
On each of whom the god-light shines,
In you the miracle I see

Of multitude in unity.
Each silken pillar stands alone;
From root to quivering twig 'tis one;
Its body drawn from earth's gray lap,
Its branches fed with gem-like sap;
Through dreamy frosts, submerged in snow,
Which spreads a twilight here below,—
Through summer opened fanlike out,
By flame of spice made smooth and stout,—
Each watched and fed and bound and guarded
As if alone of all regarded,
Yet standing in this forest fast
An atom in the tree-world vast,
One of a million—swarms that are
Mere velvet from the vale afar,
Uncounted items covering wide
The old heroic mountain-side,
Mere units from whose sacrifice
Broad complicated forests rise.”

So, in the mystic world of man,
We see the endless double plan—
The single spirit, for whose boon
Alone God lighted sun and moon,
You, or you other soul, or I,
The central wonder of the sky,
A solitary force that came
From heaven, and holds the heavenly flame;
Whose life alone contains the fears
And joys of time's unending years;
Fixed goal round which for ever stirs

The ministering universe,
Whose mighty sinew, whose clear nerve,
Whose pulse and satin skin, deserve
The best that eons can supply
Of vivid immortality.

So, gaze at the sufficing pine
For one view of your being, and mine!
But, in another view, how slight
Your hold and mine on love and light!

Items we are, of no account,
As pushing toward the sun we mount,
And 'tis but in our own conceit
We feign a godhead round our feet.
Since,—this one stunted, that one tall,
And boughs here mildewed, fit to fall,
This soiled from owls' nests, this one clean,
With shimmering fans of stainless green—
We are but parts of one design,
Monotonous and unbenign.

Last night along this huge expanse
I saw a crookèd lightning dance;
The thunder roared in hollow fit,
And all the forest moaned with it.
If from the vault in darkness steeped
A shaft of angry lightning leaped,
And tipped one pine in elfin mirth,
And scored and blasted it to earth,

Fed on its spices, burned within,
And shrivelled up its satin skin,
Where is that stricken pine to-day,
In all the forests' plumed array?

What tho' the single life be broken,
The broad, sweet woodland gives no token;
Its oneness left no wounded sense
On the undisturbed circumference,
Nor can the eye, though searching well,
Deplore that vanished miracle.

Such is the wonder of man's soul,
God-guarded, an essential whole;
Yet, in life's broad and mighty scheme,
God-unregarded, and a dream.