THE SUN
* * * * *
Thou lookest on the earth, and then it smiles;
Thy light is hid, and all things droop and mourn.
Laughs the wild sea around her budding isles,
When through their heaven thy changing car is borne;
Thou wheel’st away thy flight, the woods are shorn
Of all their waving locks, and storms awake—
All that was once so beautiful is torn
By the wild winds which plow the lonely lake,
And in their maddening rush the crested mountains shake.
The earth lies buried in a shroud of snow;
Life lingers and would die, but thy return
Gives to their gladden’d hearts an overflow
Of all the power that brooded in the urn
Of their chill’d frames, and then they proudly spurn
All bands that would confine, and give to air
Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty, till they burn,
When, on a dewy morn, thou dartest there
Rich waves of gold to wreathe with fairer light the fair.
The vales are thine; and when the touch of spring
Thrills them, and gives them gladness in thy light,
They glitter as the glancing swallow’s wing
Dashes the water in his winding flight,
And leaves behind a wave that crumbles bright,
And widens outward to the pebbled shore—
The vales are thine; and when they wake from night,
The dews that bend the grass-tips, twinkling o’er
Their soft and oozy beds, look upward, and adore.
The hills are thine; they catch the newest beam,
And gladden in thy parting, where the wood
Flames out in every leaf, and drinks the stream
That flows from out thy fullness, as a flood
Bursts from an unknown land, and rolls the food
Of nations in its waters; so thy rays
Flow and give brighter tints than ever bud,
When a clear sheet of ice reflects a blaze
Of many twinkling gems, as every gloss’d bough plays.
Thine are the mountains, where they purely lift
Snows that have never wasted in a sky
Which hath no stain; below the storm may drift
Its darkness, and the thunder-gust roar by;
Aloft in thy eternal smile they lie,
Dazzling, but cold; thy farewell glance looks there;
And when below thy hues of beauty die,
Girt round them, as a rosy belt, they bear
Into the high, dark vault a brow that still is fair.
James G. Percival.