University of Virginia Library

Rich soil of ancient springs! dear Earth!
Of whom we all are made,
In whose green treasure-house the birth
Thou lentest must be laid!
Mistress of Christian symbols, glowing
In letters of dread meaning,
In tides of song-like language flowing,
Where minstrel ears are leaning,
Where day and night
Spell words of might
By gloom or brightness hidden,
And summer hours
In bells of flowers
Sing songs, and are not chidden.
I never called thee gloomy,—never
From out thy full, fresh-flowing river
Have failed to draw sweet water,
And still thine echo in me rings
True to the faintest murmurings
That constant stream hath brought her.
So have I gazed on thee, as one
Who sits from rise to set of sun
In Troy's dim-furrowed plain,
Scanning the letters half-effaced,
And lines where some old Greek hath traced
The titles of the slain.
So strive I, as a baffled lover,
The wondrous science to recover,
Laid up in Eden still,
When our wise father gave a name
To every beast and bird that came,
With heaven-imparted skill.
All over doth this outer earth
An inner earth infold,
And sounds may reach us of its mirth
Over its pales of gold.
There spirits live, unwedded all
From the shades and shapes they wore,
Though still their printless footsteps fall
By the hearths they loved before.
We know them not, nor hear the sound
They make in threading all around:
Their office sweet and mighty prayer
Float without echo through the air.
Yet sometimes in unworldly places,
Soft sorrow's twilight vales,
We meet them with uncovered faces
Outside their golden pales,
Though dim, as they must ever be,
Like ships far-off and out at sea,
With the sun upon their sails.

Not unobserved doth April bring,
With rain-drops sparkling on her wing
From many a silver shower,
Her dewy prophecies of spring,
Close leaf and show of blossoming,
In every bank and bower.
The breezes with their fertile wooing
Earth's long-night fetters are undoing:
And she within her priestly vest
Takes back her soul into her breast.
In every blossom there is fruit,
And every flower swells at its root,
Till stalk and lily blade are seen
Piercing the mould with spikes of green.
And jealous plants all sheathed and furled
Come up with veils into the world,
And brittle shoots, where June discloses
Her jewelled lines of crimson roses.
All these, ere winter's season hoary,
Have had a blooming and a glory,
Have left their glory, and were dead,
That so they might be quickenèd.

O faithless ones! that cannot bear
Sharp pain or wan dejection,
Come witness in the vernal air
Earth's yearly resurrection!
For what are we but winter roots,
Wrapping in many folds our fruits,
Which cannot ripen here?
Our spirits from their mortal birth
Spend only in the soil of earth
One season of the year.
I do not scorn our earthly life:
It is a mystery, a strife,
A crowd of marvellings;
Our shadows, fashions, and degrees,
Elsewhere have glowing substances,
Which we may reach, when death shall please
To give us back our wings.
We have imprisoned by our sin
Man's vast intelligences,
And broken lights are flooded in
Upon them by our senses.
They are the inlets to our spirit,
Ebbing, flowing ever
From waters we shall once inherit
In Heaven's upper river.
They are the windows of our soul,
From whence the captive gazes,
And through them from the very pole,
Sunlight and moonlight ever roll,
While she her wild eye raises.
She sitteth there a captive maiden,
Upon the cold bars leaning,
Until her bosom is dread-laden
With all earth's lustrous meaning:—
Sight's ether-wingèd visions seeing,
Sound's golden circles hearing,
With Touch dissolving space and being,
And shades instead appearing.
Languid with such access of joy,
The soul herself betaketh
To another sense of sweet alloy,
Which earth, green earth awaketh.
For what is Smell that wafteth by
But the inward voice of memory?
Forward or up she never leadeth,
But household melancholy breedeth;
Hindering with fragrant wiles our haste,
With by-gone pleasures staying,
Forbidding hearts such wealth to waste,
Earth's backward call obeying,
Waking the scent-embalmèd past
With exquisite delaying.
Dear Sense! and yet I dare not dream
Thy spells which all so earthly seem
Are only earth's creating,
And have not from our Eden home
To every several flowret come
With breeze-like undulating.
But Taste, the sense that feeds the spirit,
Hath gifts ourselves could never merit,
Impartings rich of heavenly mirth
Brought out before its time on earth,
Good things, good foretastes, angel-cheer,
Presage of deathless might,
That makes the soul her wings uprear,
Like eagles in their flight.

Sit, then, O Soul! thy Master praising,
And through those windows keenly gazing,
With awe thy vileness suiting;
Through them the inner kingdom ranging,
All things to spirit ever changing,
Earth to heaven commuting.
Dread Inlets! most mysterious Five!
Linking our shadows with the skies,
By whom dead forms are made alive,
And symbols grow realities!
And yet these Five may not be all:—
This college-garden is but small
With some few dozen trees;
And yet scarce one was meant to grow,
Where our long northern winters blow
Within the English seas.
This grew by some huge western river,
This to the desert wind did quiver
In Araby the Blest:
Yon by the warm sea-shore might smile
Away in some West-Indian isle,
In lordlier foliage drest.
Who would have dreamed in those south homes,
Where icy winter never comes,
That in the heart of tropic trees
A hidden sense was moulded,
To shield them from the piercing frost
Of northern Europe's chilly coast,
And be far off across the seas,
Facing the rude Atlantic breeze,
In centuries unfolded?
Like powers in hearts of flesh reside,
Like buried Senses there abide;
Senses and Inlets fine, all over,
Which our last rising may discover.
Our bodies here may be the tomb
Of powers and motions hidden,
Which birth shall loosen from their womb
Elsewhere when it is bidden:
Fresh Taste and Sight, and other Hands
Unformed,—for work of other lands;
And secret Ears wherewith we may
Perchance hear spirits speaking,
And Scents to guide us on our way
To the fadeless flowers we're seeking:—
Verdure laid up in us, not wanted
For the hours of mortal breath,
Ready to bloom in us transplanted
By the mystery of death.

Thought hath a double stream, whose falls
Keep murmuring in her sounding halls,
Rising and sinking, faint and clear,
As breezes waft their echoes near;
One springs 'mid outward forms and shows,
And winds as it is bidden;
The other veils its wells, and flows
In a woodland channel hidden;
And at far times reveals its floods
In whitest gleamings through the woods,
O'er roots of marble breaking,
Or in a hollow green and cool
Through many a modest lingering pool
Its amber waters taking.
We have no spells to turn its flow,
Or bid its voices come and go;
For on its face are mirrored fair
The lights and shapes that are elsewhere,
And tranquil fear and shadowy love
Brood o'er its basins from above.
But oft in sudden turns of thought
Both fountains are together brought,
And mix their streams awhile;
And fancy then herself is seating
To catch the sounds and whispers fleeting,
Where Heaven and Earth in streams are meeting,
And rippling waters smile.
Again in hours of gentle daring
The soul hath traced the brook some way,
Its darkly-twisting channel wearing,
And coloured pebbles downward bearing
From where its secret fountains play.
Benighted in far woods, she sees
Forms shift about among the trees,
And vanish here and there,
And, uttered by them in their fleetness,
Soft voices of an earthly sweetness
Keep trembling on the air.
And then, when fancy's stars are waning,
The soul her wonted home regaining,
Yet still those mystic scenes retaining,
The sounds and visions so impress
Themselves upon her loneliness,
With such a dimly-living power,
That she in many an after-hour
Beholds in strange and foreign places
Familiar forms and household faces;
As though erewhile in vision dread
That place or room were visited,
And strangers' voices echo round
Like rings and links of magic sound.
She listens well to what is spoken,
As though the words were old;
And watches for some random token,
The wonder to unfold.
These are the sounds and shadowy sight
That came in waking dream,
When she was wandering in the night
Far up the heavenly stream.

Oft too in slumber's pathless mountains
The heart breaks up her ancient fountains,
Which had for years been sealed,
And the whole spirit overflows
With waters that chance-dreams disclose
In some forgotten field.
Tree-top and rock, and nodding wood
Group wildly in that whirling flood,
While Earth and Heaven meet and part
In giddy ebb and flow of heart:—
Giddy, yet held by some strong tie
Fast in the beating springs,
Which up above in sympathy
Keep time by murmurings.
For that bright stream's mysterious powers,
And all its secret going,
Burst on the surface most in hours
When sleep is o'er us flowing;
Like gurgling wells and waterfalls
Which, heard in stilly nights,
Put music in the breezy calls
That come from mountain heights.
All these—quick turns of sparkling thought,
Strange places known again,
And dreams at hollow midnight brought,
Are openings by these waters wrought,
And Heaven awhile made plain.
They who will listen at their soul,
May hear deep down that current roll,
Its waters sweetly timing;
And patient ears that listen long
May catch the fashion of its song,
And science of its chiming.
Nay, sometimes by its far faint airs
Young hearts are taken unawares;
As a stranger, sleeping on the mountains,
Is waked by waters in their mirth,
Making, as they tingle from their fountains,
Audible music through the earth.

This is the stream, the sacred Gift,
By which our outward world we lift
Into a world within,
And, because earth is dull and dark,
Where'er these waters drop, a spark
Of upper light they win.
And thus two worlds, two lives are ours,
And men move on with angel powers,
For angel graces staying;
And earth becomes a pavement fair,
Since deathless seeds are glowing there
With a Christian inlaying.
For this outward vest and this world we see
With its green and its blue and white,
With its folding-doors of day and night,
Is the silent or voiceful mystery,
That burns at the restless heart of a youth,
As he wanders here and there for the truth;
When all that he has and all that he knows
And his spirit's fertile fountains
Were absorbed in his childhood from the shows
Of rivers and woods and mountains;
When he communed little or none with books,
Which are dead men's empty biers,
That imprint on our features solemn looks
But cannot draw our tears.
The earth is a frail transparent vase
With heavenly lamps behind,
The light coming through is tinted, and draws
Figures upon the mind.
Thought's hidden stream from its upper springs
Hath brought us a few interpretings.
If the world would be still, our hearts might hear
What the secret is, when the stream winds near.
The earth is a church where no bells are rung,
And her beauty is slighted for want of tongue;
But the stream in ourselves is her voice brought back
From Heaven where it was taken,
That the minstrel spirit may have no lack
Of dulcet sounds to waken.
But a murmuring here and a murmuring there,
And a half word falling on the air,
Piece by piece we must weave in one,
Till the words in music and rhythm run,
And the poet must tell the meaning of all
That obscure and beautiful ritual.

So are we gifted; so we live,
Scarce knowing what we are:—
Deep-coloured flowers that feebly give
Their scents unto the air.
So are we gifted; so we die;
We take our gifts with us:
With the green lives that round us lie
The way is ever thus.
And so, when we rise from our chastening gloom,
We are born afresh of a stainless womb,
And the soul, that hath been like a wandering bride,
Wanders no more, and is satisfied;
For the likeness she wears was the secret thing
That lured her on in her wandering.
And joy and love to the spirit are given,
New coloured and shaped in the moulds of Heaven;
And our rising shall be like a wondering flower
That looks on the earth in her summer power
With the pride of its earliest opening hour,—
A thing that may well surprisèd be
With its own fair scent and bravery!