[SUMMER SONG.]
The meadow lark's trill and the brown thrush's whistle
From morning to evening fill all the sweet air,
And my heart is as light as the down of a thistle--
The world is so bright and the earth is so fair.
There is life in the wood, there is bloom on the meadow;
The air drips with songs that the merry birds sing.
The sunshine has won, in the battle with shadow,
And she's dressed the glad earth with robes of the spring.
The bee leaves his hive for the field of red clover
And the vale where the daisies bloom white as the snow,
And a mantle of warm yellow sunshine hangs over
The calm little pond, where the pale lilies grow.
In the woodland beyond it, a thousand gay voices
Are singing in chorus some jubilant air.
The bird and the bee, and all nature rejoices,
The world is so bright, and the earth is so fair.
I am glad as a child, in this beautiful weather;
I have tossed all my burdens and trials away;
My heart is as light-yes, as light as a feather;
I am care-free, and careless, and happy to-day.
Can it be there approaches a dark, drear to-morrow?
Can shadows e'er fall on this beautiful earth!
Ah! to-day is my own! no forebodings of sorrow
Shall darken my skies, or shall dampen my mirth.
[A TWILIGHT THOUGHT.]
The sweet maid, Day, has pillowed her head
On the breast of her dusky lover. Night.
The sun has made her a couch of red,
And woven a cover of dim twilight;
And the lover kisses the maiden's brow,
As low on her couch, she sleepeth now.
Here at my window, above the street,
I sit, as the day lies in repose;
And I list to the ceaseless tramp of feet,
And I watch this human tide that flows
Upward and downward, to and fro,
As the waves of an ocean, ebb and flow.
Over and over the busy town;
Hither and thither, through all the day,
One goes up, and another down,
Each in his own allotted way.
Strangers and kinsmen pass and meet,
And jar, and jostle upon the street.
People that never met before,
People that never will meet again;
A careless glance of the eye, no more,
And both are lost in the sea of men.
Strangers divided by miles, in heart,
Under my window meet and part.
But whether their feet pass up, or down,
Over the river, east or west;
Whether it's in or out of the town,
To a haunt of sin, or a home of rest,--
We are journeying to a common goal--
There is onelast point for every soul.