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The Sonnets of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard (1821-1873)

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SONNETS 1860–1872
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Part III
 1. 
[Once on a day, alone but not elate]
 2. 
[But Nature, in her mood, pushes or pulls]
 3. 
[Yet not for him lifts the low weather cloud]
 4. 
[Thin little leaves of wood-fern, ribbed and toothed]
 5. 
[How well do I recall that walk in state]
 6. 
[I looked across the rollers of the deep]
 7. 
[O rest divine! O golden certainty]
 8. 
[As one turned round on some high mountain top]
 9. 
[But into order falls our life at last]
 10. 
[Sometimes I walk where the deep water dips]
 11. 
[Long Island! Yes! When first my vision swept]
 12. 
[“Young Silas Long, a carrier through these woods]
 13. 
[“Yes, the dead pines and deersfoot on the ground]
 14. 
[An episode: yet with a relish rank]
 15. 
[But we are set to strive to make our mark]
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Part IV
 1. 
[Still, like a city, seated on a height]
 2. 
[But thought, like a mailed archer helmed and tall]
 3. 
[And thus the mind by its own impulse deep]
 4. 
[Yes, pray thy God to give, whate'er thou art]
 5. 
[Yet some there be, believers for the nonce]
 6. 
[And two I knew, an old man and a boy]
 7. 
[But war his overturning trumpet blew]
 8. 
[Nor strange it is, to us who walk in bonds]
 9. 
[Here, where the red man swept the leaves away]
 10. 
[Hast thou seen reversed the prophet's miracle]
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Part V
 1. 
[But Nature where she gives must give in kind]
 2. 
[Nor, though she seem to cast with backward hand]
 3. 
[And yet tonight, when summer-daylight dies]
 4. 
[But man finds means, grant him but place and room]
 5. 
[Where will the ladder land? Who knows?—who knows]
 6. 
[Licentiate of the schools, with knowledge hot]
 7. 
[That night the town turned out and crammed the hall]
 8. 
[A garden lodge, shut in with quaintest growth]
 9. 
[For these, my friend, were but the foldings fair]
 10. 
[A poet's moonshine! Yes, for love must lend]
 11. 
[Another. Opposite as sky and lands]
 12. 
['Twas granted. But the bitter god of love]
 13. 
[A wash of rippling breath that just arrives]
 14. 
[And me my winter's task is drawing over]
 15. 
[Let me give something!—though my spring be done]
 16. 
[Let me give something!—as the years unfold]

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134

[Yes, pray thy God to give, whate'er thou art]

Yes, pray thy God to give, whate'er thou art,
Some work to be by thee with reverence wrought:
Some trumpet note obeyed, some good fight fought,
Ere thou lay down thy weapons and depart.
Brood on thyself, until thy lamp be spent;
Bind all thy force to compass and invent;
But shun the reveries of voluptuous thought,
Day-musings, the floralia of the heart
And vain imaginations: else may start
Beside the portal of thy tower or tent,
Rending thy trance with dissonant clang and jar,
A summons that shall drive thee wild to hear—
Loud, as when in the dreaming conqueror's ear
Antigenidas blew a point of war.
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