So, in the wise Diviner's hand, Be mine the hazel's grateful part To feel, beneath a thirsty land, The living waters thrill and start, The beating of the rivulet's heart!
Sufficeth me the gift to light With latest bloom the dark, cold days; To call some hidden spring to sight That, in these dry and dusty ways, Shall sing its pleasant song of praise.
O Love! the hazel-wand may fail, But thou canst lend the surer spell, That, passing over Baca's vale, Repeats the old-time miracle, And makes the desert-land a well.
1874.
SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP.
A gold fringe on the purpling hem Of hills the river runs, As down its long, green valley falls The last of summer's suns.
Along its tawny gravel-bed Broad-flowing, swift, and still, As if its meadow levels felt The hurry of the hill, Noiseless between its banks of green From curve to curve it slips; The drowsy maple-shadows rest Like fingers on its lips.
A waif from Carroll's wildest hills, Unstoried and unknown; The ursine legend of its name Prowls on its banks alone.
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn As ever Yarrow knew, Or, under rainy Irish skies, By Spenser's Mulla grew; And through the gaps of leaning trees Its mountain cradle shows The gold against the amethyst, The green against the rose.
Touched by a light that hath no name, A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mountain wall Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
No longer granite-browed, They melt in rosy mist; the rock Is softer than the cloud; The valley holds its breath; no leaf Of all its elms is twirled The silence of eternity Seems falling on the world.
The pause before the breaking seals Of mystery is this; Yon miracle-play of night and day Makes dumb its witnesses.
What unseen altar crowns the hills That reach up stair on stair?
What eyes look through, what white wings fan These purple veils of air?
What Presence from the heavenly heights To those of earth stoops down?
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods On Ida's snowy crown!
Slow fades the vision of the sky, The golden water pales, And over all the valley-land A gray-winged vapor sails.
I go the common way of all; The sunset fires will burn, The flowers will blow, the river flow, When I no more return.
No whisper from the mountain pine Nor lapsing stream shall tell The stranger, treading where I tread, Of him who loved them well.
But beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast; The glory of this sunset heaven Into my soul has passed, A sense of gladness unconfined To mortal date or clime; As the soul liveth, it shall live Beyond the years of time.
Beside the mystic asphodels Shall bloom the home-born flowers, And new horizons flush and glow With sunset hues of ours.
Farewell! these smiling hills must wear Too soon their wintry frown, And snow-cold winds from off them shake The maple's red leaves down.
But I shall see a summer sun Still setting broad and low; The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom, The golden water flow.
A lover's claim is mine on all I see to have and hold,-- The rose-light of perpetual hills, And sunsets never cold!
1876
THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL.
They left their home of summer ease Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees, To seek, by ways unknown to all, The promise of the waterfall.
Some vague, faint rumor to the vale Had crept--perchance a hunter's tale-- Of its wild mirth of waters lost On the dark woods through which it tossed.
Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere Whirled in mad dance its misty hair; But who had raised its veil, or seen The rainbow skirts of that Undine?
They sought it where the mountain brook Its swift way to the valley took; Along the rugged slope they clomb, Their guide a thread of sound and foam.
Height after height they slowly won; The fiery javelins of the sun Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade With rock and vine their steps delayed.
But, through leaf-openings, now and then They saw the cheerful homes of men, And the great mountains with their wall Of misty purple girdling all.
The leaves through which the glad winds blew Shared the wild dance the waters knew; And where the shadows deepest fell The wood-thrush rang his silver bell.
Fringing the stream, at every turn Swung low the waving fronds of fern; From stony cleft and mossy sod Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod.
And still the water sang the sweet, Glad song that stirred its gliding feet, And found in rock and root the keys Of its beguiling melodies.
Beyond, above, its signals flew Of tossing foam the birch-trees through; Now seen, now lost, but baffling still The weary seekers' slackening will.
Each called to each: "Lo here! Lo there!
Its white scarf flutters in the air!"
They climbed anew; the vision fled, To beckon higher overhead.
So toiled they up the mountain-slope With faint and ever fainter hope; With faint and fainter voice the brook Still bade them listen, pause, and look.
Meanwhile below the day was done; Above the tall peaks saw the sun Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set Behind the hills of violet.
"Here ends our quest!" the seekers cried, "The brook and rumor both have lied!
The phantom of a waterfall Has led us at its beck and call."
But one, with years grown wiser, said "So, always baffled, not misled, We follow where before us runs The vision of the shining ones.
"Not where they seem their signals fly, Their voices while we listen die; We cannot keep, however fleet, The quick time of their winged feet.
"From youth to age unresting stray These kindly mockers in our way; Yet lead they not, the baffling elves, To something better than themselves?
"Here, though unreached the goal we sought, Its own reward our toil has brought: The winding water's sounding rush, The long note of the hermit thrush,
"The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond And river track, and, vast, beyond Broad meadows belted round with pines, The grand uplift of mountain lines!
"What matter though we seek with pain The garden of the gods in vain, If lured thereby we climb to greet Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet?
"To seek is better than to gain, The fond hope dies as we attain; Life's fairest things are those which seem, The best is that of which we dream.
"Then let us trust our waterfall Still flashes down its rocky wall, With rainbow crescent curved across Its sunlit spray from moss to moss.
"And we, forgetful of our pain, In thought shall seek it oft again; Shall see this aster-blossomed sod, This sunshine of the golden-rod,
"And haply gain, through parting boughs, Grand glimpses of great mountain brows Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen Of lakes deep set in valleys green.
"So failure wins; the consequence Of loss becomes its recompense; And evermore the end shall tell The unreached ideal guided well.