AUTUMN THOUGHTS
Gone hath the Spring, with all its flowers, And gone the Summer's pomp and show, And Autumn, in his leafless bowers, Is waiting for the Winter's snow.
I said to Earth, so cold and gray, "An emblem of myself thou art."
"Not so," the Earth did seem to say, "For Spring shall warm my frozen heart."
I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams Of warmer sun and softer rain, And wait to hear the sound of streams And songs of merry birds again.
But thou, from whom the Spring hath gone, For whom the flowers no longer blow, Who standest blighted and forlorn, Like Autumn waiting for the snow;
No hope is thine of sunnier hours, Thy Winter shall no more depart; No Spring revive thy wasted flowers, Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.
1849.
ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR.
All day the darkness and the cold Upon my heart have lain, Like shadows on the winter sky, Like frost upon the pane;
But now my torpid fancy wakes, And, on thy Eagle's plume, Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird, Or witch upon her broom!
Below me roar the rocking pines, Before me spreads the lake Whose long and solemn-sounding waves Against the sunset break.
I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh The grain he has not sown; I see, with flashing scythe of fire, The prairie harvest mown!
I hear the far-off voyager's horn; I see the Yankee's trail,-- His foot on every mountain-pass, On every stream his sail.
By forest, lake, and waterfall, I see his pedler show; The mighty mingling with the mean, The lofty with the low.
He's whittling by St. Mary's Falls, Upon his loaded wain; He's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks, With eager eyes of gain.
I hear the mattock in the mine, The axe-stroke in the dell, The clamor from the Indian lodge, The Jesuit chapel bell!
I see the swarthy trappers come From Mississippi's springs; And war-chiefs with their painted brows, And crests of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, The steamer smokes and raves; And city lots are staked for sale Above old Indian graves.
I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be; The first low wash of waves, where soon Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yet and warm; The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form!
Each rude and jostling fragment soon Its fitting place shall find,-- The raw material of a State, Its muscle and its mind!
And, westering still, the star which leads The New World in its train Has tipped with fire the icy spears Of many a mountain chain.
The snowy cones of Oregon Are kindling on its way; And California's golden sands Gleam brighter in its ray!
Then blessings on thy eagle quill, As, wandering far and wide, I thank thee for this twilight dream And Fancy's airy ride!
Yet, welcomer than regal plumes, Which Western trappers find, Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance sown, Like feathers on the wind.
Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, Whose glistening quill I hold; Thy home the ample air of hope, And memory's sunset gold!
In thee, let joy with duty join, And strength unite with love, The eagle's pinions folding round The warm heart of the dove!
So, when in darkness sleeps the vale Where still the blind bird clings The sunshine of the upper sky Shall glitter on thy wings!
1849.
APRIL.
"The spring comes slowly up this way."
Christabel.
'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard; For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow, And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow; Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light, O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots; And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps, Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps, Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!
For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth; For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!
Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast, Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow, All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau, Until all our dreams of the land of the blest, Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny southwest.
O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath, Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this death; Renew the great miracle; let us behold The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled, And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old!
Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain, Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, And in blooming of flower and budding of tree The symbols and types of our destiny see; The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole, And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul!
1852.
PICTURES
I.
Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town, The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown; Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine, And the brimmed river from its distant fall, Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,-- Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light, Attendant angels to the house of prayer, With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine,-- Once more, through God's great love, with you I share A morn of resurrection sweet and fair As that which saw, of old, in Palestine, Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom From the dark night and winter of the tomb!
2d, 5th mo., 1852.
II.
White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass, And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass; Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky, Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, While mounting with his dog-star high and higher Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire.
Between me and the hot fields of his South A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth, Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight, As if the burning arrows of his ire Broke as they fell, and shattered into light; Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind, And hear it telling to the orchard trees, And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees, Tales of fair meadows, green with constant streams, And mountains rising blue and cool behind, Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams, And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined.
So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned, Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs Of a serener and a holier land, Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland.
Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, Blow from the eternal hills! make glad our earthly way!