An angel and a fiend by turns, A grace, a fury,—all we find As shapings of the human mind In her strange aspect shines and burns; One moment infinitely kind; The next, a breaking heart she spurns.
Her lightnings smite; her arctic breath Congeals the traveller’s blood, and lo, He sinks into a tomb of snow! No prayer can bribe the clutch of death.
She lets her savage cyclones loose, She bids her flaming lavas flow, And sudden as a ruffian’s blow Great cities perish! What excuse? Does God, indeed, ordain it so? Is not the problem more abstruse?
If we but mark how finely blend The foul and fair, the dark and bright That in this Mother-Sphinx unite, We may believe her still our friend.
Excessive beauty floods the sky, And earth is fair through all the year;— In autumn, when the woods are sere, In winter, when the white winds fly, And blow their trumpets far and near, There’s beauty for a loving eye.
The sculptor, in long ages past, Enamoured, taxed his glorious art That he might press his hungry heart To Nature’s charms, and hold her fast.
Like him, we shall not fail to find On earth, in sky, in air, in sea, Many a dazzling deity, If pure in heart, and great in mind.
Then let us live as best we may, And bid our souls ascend, and sing Like birds and brooks that greet the spring. Shall we be found less wise than they? Hence, Care, upon thy ebon wing! I’m happy with my friend to-day.