 | Poems |  |
166
From Nature to Man.
Time was when Nature's every mystic moodPoured round my heart a flood of eager joy;
When pageantry of sunsets moved the boy
More than high ventures of the great and good;
When trellised shadows in the vernal wood,
And little peeping flowers, so sweet and coy,
Were simple happiness without alloy,
And whispered to me things I understood.
But now the strange sad weight of human woe,
And all the bitterness of human wrong,
Press on my saddened spirit as I go,
And stir the pulsings of a graver song:
Dread mysteries of life and death I scan,
And all my soul is only full of Man.
(1885.)
| Poems | |