University of Virginia Library

2. Part Second.

1844.

After long-wandering in the crowded streets
Of busy cities, where Humanity
Is least and greatest; after gay saloons,
And soft, seductive luxuries, and forms
Languidly beautiful, and oft-heard tones
Have pall'd upon the senses; what delight
Steals o'er the spirit, in the beautiful haunts
Of Nature, 'mid the silence, and the shade,
And low, sweet murmurs from the earth and air,
And all the holy influences that come
With blesséd gleams of the blue heavens above!
Society grows stale, and men become
Not what they were, or seemed to be. We change—
All change, both to each other, and ourselves.
Our habitudes, our passions, our delights,
Are ever mutable. But in these shades,
Amid these venerable trees, beneath
Yon blue o'erarching canopy, where'er
The unshorn majesty of Nature reigns,
There is a glorious, an abounding joy,
Forever. Not to haunts like these belong
The pallid cheek, the sickly frame, the roll
Of feelings grown untimely old:—But you,
Ye wild and wooded hills, ye flowery dales
That stretch between and bask in light, ye rocks
O'er which the cool springs trickle, and ye clear
And flashing rivulets, that run along
And murmur to the winds, which murmur back,
—Audible voices of the Deity!
—Visible impress of Almighty Power!
—Bright, bland expression of Creative Love!
Ye still are new and beautiful: and still
Within your calm and unpolluted depths
The thoughts are fresh, and springy limb doth long
Retain its elasticity, the heart
Broods not and sickens not o'er ills that fast
Beget each other, and the feelings know
An almost perpetuity of youth.
Far-seated in these mighty groves, I hear
The solemn Anthem of the Centuries
Roll up, as if the Majesty of God
Swept o'er the Universe, and spoke: the low,
Deep plaint of millions that have lived, and toil'd,
And died, in bondage—the despairing cry
Of struggling hearts that pour'd their torrents out,
And sank exhausted down beneath the hard
And crushing heel of tyranny—the sweet,
Sad interludes of mercy, and of love—
The glad songs of deliverance—the thick
And smothered voice of hate—the taunt of scorn—
The terrible threat of vengeance—the intense
Though whispered oaths that league determined men,
And know no revocation—and, o'er all,
The exulting shout of Freedom from the hills,
And from the plains, and from the empurpled seas!
And then peals out from billowy chimes of thought,
A wild, irregular song, that has such tune
As the sea sings with, and a symphony
Like unto that which gales from Labrador
Pipe in the shrouds when waves roll mountain high.
A wild, hoarse song, but truthful.—As from out
The laboring bosom of the Carib Sea,
Isle after isle has sprung, rooted in rock
And ribb'd with adamant, which even now
Are to each other reaching out strong arms,
That yet shall clasp, and firmly interlace,
And circle into states confederate,
The beauty and the wonder of the world:
So, from the great profound of Thought, comes up
Truth after truth, compact and luminous,
Which, each with each uniting, intertwine,
Till, girt with principle and grooved in right,
Broad systems form that are the strength of man
And bulwarks of his freedom.—We behold
Cycle and epicycle rounding back
Into infinitude. We cannot see
The end from the beginning. Only this
With something like assurance stamps itself
Upon the mind: that the great cycle of all,
In which these cycles move, starts from the base
In an ascending grade that knows no check,
Runs circle after circle, never joined,
And strengthens to the summit. This supplies
Larger and larger fields for man, and gives
The soul that larger freedom which it seeks,
And has sought from the first, continually:
And with the larger freedom, still must come
The larger forms it covets, and with these
The full enfranchisement of man, which is
The aim and the attainment of the Soul:
For full enfranchisement is faith, and love,
And charity, and peace o'er all the earth.
Hope is from Heaven: then let man not despair!
The Plan of the Eternal moves right on:
It knows no ebb—it makes no pause—it has
No Ajalon. The cycles fill the void,
In the great Cycle upward moving still,
And resting in Perfection, full-attained
Here and Hereafter—not in either state
Alone, but in both only.—Men despair,
Sicken and die, believing that the base,
Unscrupulous arts by which their fellow men
O'erreach each other, must destroy the poise
Of Right forever, and to chaos back
Hurl frail Humanity. But God's high scheme
Depends not on contingencies like these:
Men, the poor instruments, may fail in faith
Among themselves, and lack fidelity
To truth, to justice, mercy, love, and all
That human reason deems essential: yet,
God overrules each wrong for right, and still
The great design moves on and on, while all
Who falter, perish in their faithlessness.
This is the lesson Meditation reads,
Sitting in solitude on mossy rocks,
Or walking hand in hand with Nature, here
In her great temples, arch'd with heaven's own blue,
And pillared with the majesty of trees
That have the strength of centuries.—To one
Who in these quiet halls is far removed
From human passions, vain desires, the throes
Of party, and the conflicts of the field,
How paltry, wicked, miserable, mean,
Seem the contentions of society!
Turn, thou whose ears have drunk the jarring sounds
Of wrangling tongues, in crowded thoroughfares
And busy marts—or thou whose eyes have looked
On the red battle-field, and there beheld
The quivering limb, the writhing countenance,
The blackened and the putrifying corpse—
Turn from all this, which liker is to hell
Than to aught else, and with thy soul commune,
Here in the quiet of Miami Woods.
—Look out upon the bordering fields, where spreads
The yellow wheat, and waves the tasseling corn;
Look in, where the great heart of Nature beats
Steadily, peacefully, ever full of love;
Look down, at the sweet flowers that clothe the ground,
Blooming for all, and giving thankfully
Their perfume for the light that visits them;
Look up, at the blue heavens that bend o'er all,
Serene, and beautiful, and grand, and good:
Then, if thou wonderest, ask this little child,
Whose soul is awed to silence, what there is
In all this scene, that thou should'st thus be call'd
From the great world where beats the human heart
In all its power, and she will answer—“God,
And God's own peace, and majesty, and strength!”
—In such a Presence, bend thy stubborn neck,
And stand uncovered. God, not man, is here;
Nature, not art; dissimulation not,
But frankness; falsehood never, only truth.
And if thou go not hence a better man,
Pray fervently for help—for thou hast need.
Sage monitors of youth are wont to say
The eye grows early dim to nature's charms,
And commerce with the world soon dulls the ear
To heavenliest sounds. It may be so; but I,
Whose feet were on the hills from earliest life,
And in the vales, and by the flashing brooks,
Have not so found it:—deeper in my heart,
Deeper and deeper year by year, has sunk
The love of nature, in my close, and long,
And fond companionship with woods and waves,
With birds and breezes, with the starry sky,
The mountain-height, the rocky gorge, the slope
Mantled with flow'rs, and the far-reaching plain
That mingles with the heavens. It is not so—
It is not so save where the ear grows dull
To God's own voice, and the averted eye,
Thick film'd with sin, is darkened thus, and lost
To all his visible glory. The green fields
Are studded with their golden buttons still,
And living with their gilded butterflies,
That pass not unobserved. The rocky pool,
In which the robin bathes his dusky plumes,
The tufted flow'rs that smile beyond, the slope
That from its margin greenly steals away
To bordering woodlands fill'd with airy tongues,
Still lure us from the hot and dusty road
As in the years gone by. There come at morn,
From the cool groves and from the orchards round,
The same sweet songs of birds that charm'd the ear
Of childhood, and of youth; and in the eve
Floats up from the broad meadows still, the same
Sweet smell of new-made hay. Day and the Sun
In all his glory—Night and all she hath
Of beauty, or of mystery, or joy,
Still hold their spell upon the heart, and fill
The soul with wonder and with awe. The earth
Fades not, and fails not in its wealth of charms:—
We seek them now, as in our earliest years,
And find them: we plunge far into the woods,
And roam the flowery fields, and climb the hills,
Not less the child that we are more the man:
We loiter where the waters of the brook
Dance down the pebbly slope, and watch the leaf
Or feather that is on its bosom borne,
Till lost to sight: the little hand that scoop'd
The cool wave up in childhood, larger grown,
Needs now no prompting, but supplies the draught
To thirsty lip or heated forehead. Now,
As then, we marvel at the growing grass,
And at the blooming flower, and at the tree
That rises up and pierces the blue sky
Among the clouds. The high heav'n-spanning arch,
That evening builds when storm has roll'd away
And dies far east, the purple sunset's hue,
The unmatch'd iris of the humming-bird,
The rose's cup, the lily's silver bell,
The blue-eyed violet—all sights and sounds
That won the eye or charm'd the ear in youth,
Are living still. Eternal beauty dies
Within man's heart but through eternal sin,
Or with annihilation. He who has
The love of right, the fear of wrong, the hate
And scorn of evil, multiform and dark—
Who hearkens to the still small voice within—
Who hourly bids the hourly tempter back—
Who loves his fellow-men—who leaves to Heav'n
The judgment of his enemies: not to him,
Not to his eye, not to his ear, will God
Willingly suffer the glad sights and sounds
Of nature to grow dim, or to become
Inaudible. Years change us not so much,
Nor commerce with the world; but groveling thoughts,
Vaulting ambitions, unrepressed desires,
Whose oft-indulgence blunts the edge of youth:
These early dim the eye to nature's charms,
And early dull the ear to heavenliest sounds.
My thoughts, exultant o'er the strides of time,
Flow as they list in novel cadences.—
A cheerful melody, learned long ago,
But half forgotten now, comes stealing up
Among remembered tones of other years,
And breaks in fitful murmurs from my lips:—
To this the currents of my musing flow
A simple melody, got long ago:
A cheerful thought, more difficult to learn.—
So lightly, fondly, sweetly, freshly lies
The youth within my heart: so rest it there!
'Tis only feeling makes us old: our years
But bear us toward the grave. We all must die,
But must not all grow old, except in years.
—The groves, whose beauty and whose music stole
Into my wondering spirit long ago,
Were ne'er more beautiful than now, were ne'er
More musical. I come and walk the ways
Of boyhood, and I find the flowers the same:
I pause, and sit in old familiar seats,
And see no change, save that the gathering mold
Is greener, and that now upon them press
Mosses and lichens of a few more years.—
The youth is in the heart of Nature, too!
Beautiful, beautiful Youth!—Freshness is youth,
And truthfulness is youth, and innocence:
And faith, and love, and joyousness are youth:
Whatever undistorted stands, and wears
The impress and the glow with which at first
It came from God, is panoplied in youth.
It gathers not the dust of time—it takes
No tarnish from the earth—but walks abroad
Effulgent with the glory of its Source,
And trailing robes of beauty evermore.
My soul is full; and from its stirring depths,
Oh, beautiful young heart! whose tendrils cling
So closely round my own, flow, overflow,
These fervent strains to thine:—