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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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114

[But Nature, in her mood, pushes or pulls]

But Nature, in her mood, pushes or pulls
At her caprice. We see what is not shown
By that which we behold; nor this alone;
To commonest matters let us fix a bound
Or purport, straight another use is found
And this annihilates and that annuls.
And every straw of grass, or dirt, or stone,
Has different function from the kind well-known:
Commerce and custom, dikes and watermills.
Not to the sea alone, from inland earth,
The stream draws down its freight of floats and hulls,
But backward far, upwinding to the north
The river gleams, a highway for the gulls
That fly not over land, into the hills.
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