To a Mountain Stream.
GLAD as childish laughter
From a childish throng,
Sweet as bird voice after
Daybreak is your song.
Racing down the mountain
On your shining feet,
Waltzing at the fountain
To its love song sweet.
On and on you travel,
Leaving me behind,
Like a silken ravel
With the weeds you wind.
Laughing at distresses;
Braving battles, too;
Who your trouble guesses,
And your sorrow—who?
Tell me as you hurry
Through the stubble field,
Why not stop to worry—
But no frown’s revealed.
Sometime you must weary
Of this constant strife;
When the clouds are dreary,
Tire you not of life?
Of the dead leaves drifted
On your saddened face,
And the snow flakes sifted
From the cloudland place?
Yet you ne’er repineth,
But alike content
With the sun that shineth,
And the rainstorm sent.
Teach me half the beauty
That your heart must know,
And through fields of duty
Like you, will I go.
Pen Pictures.
(WRITTEN DURING A SNOW-STORM.)
I love the snow flakes in the air,
When from the heavens they downward dart;
I love to watch them sailing there,
Like thoughts freed from a poet’s heart,
Uncertain which, the earth or sky,
Should claim their last abiding place;
And yet I watch them drifting by,
And strive to join the airy race.
The railway cars like spirits glide
Through many a mountain’s haunted tomb,
Above the river’s solemn tide,
Along the ravine’s chilly room;
On, on, through cedar groves we wind,
That yesterday a zephyr wooed;
To-day they stand with heads inclined,
A sad and stricken multitude.
The sky bends low with heavy clouds,
And from the long slope of a hill,
The pines look down in spotless shrouds
Upon a valley whiter still.
A tiny stream runs breathless by,
Affrighted at the ghostly sight;
The sun sleeps in the western sky,
And twilight deepens into night.
The train glides on. Each mountain scene
Is like a panoramic view,
Though oft I toward the window lean,
To scan some object that I knew.
I see a log hut in the vale,
And rustic children glad and warm;
A mother’s face, forlorn and pale,
Looks out upon the winter storm.
The little cascade down the glen
Is falling like a mourner’s tears;
The wind shrieks by, and from his den
Jack Frost hangs out his icy spears,
Defying e’en the piling drift;
And while the Winter King he warns,
Lo! through a cloud above the cliff,
The young moon shakes her silver horns.
Orion next his rage revealed,
As if he, too, the insult felt;
He raises high his club and shield,
And swings his bright sword from his belt;
And like a demon downward driven,
The howling wind his dungeon seeks;
For nature sees the hosts of heaven
Resent her cold and heartless freaks.
The storm grew still, and I could see
The clouds above the cliff disband,
E’en as the wave on Galilee
Grew docile at the Lord’s command;
And as I shake from off my pen
The ink that stamped these pictures chill,
I seem to hear those words again
Breathed softly o’er me, “Peace, be still.”
January, 1886.
