 | Egeria, or, The Spirit of Nature and Other Poems |  |
A PLEA FOR OUR PHYSICAL LIFE.
I
Why should we ever toil,In silence or turmoil,
To gather gold like Californian slaves?
Why should we still debate,
In melancholy state,
Knowledge abstruse to lead us to our graves?
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Filling the earth with schemes
Of human happiness from our Utopian shelves—
World-wide! alas—but far too narrow for ourselves?
II
Let us be young again,And o'er the grassy plain
Gambol like children, and give Care the slip,
Forgetful of distress
And mental stateliness;
Let us be young in spirit, as we trip
Beside the running brooks,
Heedless of men and books,
And heart-sore Wisdom's frowns or magisterial sighs,
Looking contemptuous down upon our revelries.
III
Have we outgrown the joysThat filled our hearts as boys?
And does the music of the thrushes bring
No more the young delight,
That in our childhood bright
Made beautiful the mornings of the spring?
Ripple the streams no more,
As in the days of yore?
Or are our ears so dulled by commerce with our kind,
That we can hear no hymns between the trees and wind?
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IV
In our too plodding homesWe ponder over tomes,
Ledger and day-book, till we quite forget
That there are fields and bowers,
And river-banks and flowers,
And that we owe our languid limbs a debt:
A debt most sweet to pay—
A needful holiday—
A brain-refreshing truce, 'mid intellectual strife,
That, fought too keenly out, impairs the mortal life.
V
We do our nature wrongNeglecting over long
The bodily joys that help to make us wise;
The ramble up the slope
Of the high mountain cope—
The long day's walk, the vigorous exercise,
The fresh, luxurious bath,
Far from the trodden path,
Or 'mid the ocean waves dashing with harmless roar,
Lifting us off our feet upon the sandy shore.
VI
Kind Heaven! there is no endOf pleasures as we wend
Our pilgrimage in life's undevious way,
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Of the Eternal Cause,
And for His glory and our good obey.
But intellectual pride
Sets half these joys aside,
And our perennial care absorbs the soul so much,
That life burns cold and dim beneath its deadening touch.
VII
What pleasures he hath missedWho struggles to exist
Amid fictitious wants, and luxuries vain;
Spending his youth and prime
As if our comrade, Time,
Were but a servitor in Mammon's train;
And, waking up at last,
When threescore years have passed,
With stiff and palsied joints, and just enough of breath
To own how wrong he was, and pay his court to Death.
VIII
Welcome, ye plump green meads,Ye streams and sighing reeds!
Welcome, ye corn-fields, waving like a sea!
Welcome, the leafy bowers,
And children gathering flowers!
And farewell, for awhile, sage drudgery!
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Our blood is not yet cold:
Come with me to the fields, thou man of many ills,
And give thy limbs a chance among the daffodils!
IX
Come with me to the woods,And let their solitudes
Re-echo to our voices as we go.
Upon thy weary brain
Let childhood come again,
Spite of thy wealth, thy learning, or thy woe!
Stretch forth thy limbs, and leap—
Thy life has been asleep;
And though the wrinkles deep may furrow thy pale brow,
Show me, if thou art wise, how like a child art thou!
| Egeria, or, The Spirit of Nature and Other Poems | |