University of Virginia Library

THE ETERNITY OF NATURE

Leaves from eternity are simple things
To the worlds gaze whereto a spirit clings
Sublime & lasting—trampled underfoot
The daisy lives & strikes its little root
Into the lap of time—centurys may come
& pass away into the silent tomb
& still the child hid in the womb of time
Shall smile & pluck them when this simple rhyme
Shall be forgotten like a churchyard stone
Or lingering lie unnoticed & alone
When eighteen hundred years our common date
Grows many thousands in their marching state
Aye still the child with pleasure in his eye
Shall cry the daisy a familiar cry
& run to pluck it—in the self same state
As when time found it in his infant date
& like a child himself when all was new
Wonder might smile & make him notice too
—Its little golden bosom frilled with snow
Might win een eve to stoop adown & show
Her partner Adam in the silky grass
This little gem that smiled where pleasure was
& loving eve from eden followed ill
& bloomed with sorrow & lives smiling still
As once in eden under heavens breath
So now on blighted earth & on the lap of death
It smiles for ever—Cowslaps golden blooms
That in the closen & the meadow comes
Shall come when kings & empires fade & die
& in the meadows as times partners lie
As fresh two thousand years to come as now
With those five crimson spots upon its brow
& little brooks that hum a simple lay
In green unnoticed spots from praise away
Shall sing—when poets in times darkness hid
Shall lie like memory in a pyramid
Forgetting yet not all forgot though lost
Like a threads end in ravelled windings crost
& the small humble bee shall hum as long
As nightingales for time protects the song
& nature is their soul to whom all clings
Of fair or beautiful in lasting things
The little robin in the quiet glen
Hidden from fame & all the sons of men
Sings unto time a pastoral & gives
A music that lives on & ever lives
Both spring & autumn years rich bloom & fade
Longer then songs that poets ever made
& think ye these times play things pass proud skill
Time loves them like a child & ever will
& so I worship them in bushy spots
& sing with them when all else notice not
& feel the music of their mirth agree
With that sooth quiet that bestirreth me
& if I touch aright that quiet tone
That soothing truth that shadows from their own
Then many a year shall grow in after days
& still find hearts to love my quiet lays
Yet cheering mirth with thoughts sung not for fame
But for the joy that with their utterance came
That inward breath of rapture urged not loud
—Birds singing lone flye silent past a crowd
—So in these pastoral spots which childish time
Makes dear to me I wander out & ryhme
What time the dewy mornings infancy
Hangs on each blade of grass & every tree
& sprents the red thighs of the bumble bee
Who 'gins by times unwearied minstrelsy
Who breakfasts dines & most divinely sups
With every flower save golden buttercups
On their proud bosoms he will never go
But passes bye with scarcely “how do ye do”
So in their showy gaudy shining cells
May be the summers honey never dwells
—Her ways are mysterys all yet endless youth
Lives in them all unchangable as truth
With the odd number five strange natures laws
Plays many freaks nor once mistakes the cause
& in the cowslap peeps this very day
Five spots appear which time neer wears away
Nor once mistakes the counting—look within
Each peep & five nor more nor less is seen
& trailing bindweed with its pinky cup
Five lines of paler hue goes streaking up
& birds a many keep the rule alive
& lay five eggs nor more nor less then five
& flowers how many own that mystic power
With five leaves ever making up the flower
The five leaved grass trailing its golden cups
Of flowers—five leaves make all for which I stoop
& briony in the hedge that now adorns
The tree to which it clings & now the thorns
Own five star pointed leaves of dingy white
Count which I will all make the number right
& spreading goosegrass trailing all abroad
In leaves of silver green about the road
Five leaves make every blossom all along
I stoop for many none are counted wrong
Tis natures wonder & her makers will
Who bade earth be & order owns him still
As that superior power who keeps the key
Of wisdom power & might through all eternity