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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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157

[Let me give something!—though my spring be done]

Let me give something!—though my spring be done,
Give to the children, ere their summertime!
Though stirred with grief, like rain let fall my rhyme
And tell of one whose aim was much: of one
Whose strife was this, that in his thought should be
Some power of wind, some drenching of the sea,
Some drift of stars across a darkling coast,
Imagination, insight, memory, awe,
And dear New England nature first and last,—
Whose end was high, whose work was well-begun:
Of one who from his window looked and saw
His little hemlocks in the morning sun,
And while he gazed, into his heart almost
The peace that passeth understanding, passed.
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