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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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116

[Thin little leaves of wood-fern, ribbed and toothed]

Thin little leaves of wood-fern, ribbed and toothed,
Long curved-sail needles of the green pitch-pine
And common sand-grass skirt the horizon line,
And over these the incorruptible blue.
Here let me gently lie and softly view
All world asperities, lightly touched and smoothed
As by his gracious hand, the great Bestower.
What though the year be late, some colours run
Yet through the dry, some links of melody.
Still let me be, by such, assuaged and soothed
And happier made—as when, our schoolday done,
We hunted on, from flower to frosty flower,
Tattered and dim the last red butterfly,
Or the old grasshopper molasses-mouthed.
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