The furrows running up are fraught
With meanings; there the goddess walks,
While Proserpine is young, and there—
’Mid the late autumn sheaves, her voice
Sobbing and choked with dumb despair—
The nights will hear her wailing for her child!
Whatever dim tradition tells,
Whatever history may reveal,
Or fancy, from her starry brows,
Of light or dreamful lustre shed,
Could not at this sweet time increase
The quiet consecration of the spot.
Blest with the sweat of labour, blest
With the young sun’s first vigorous beams,
Village hope and harvest prayer,—
The heart that throbs beneath it holds
A bliss so perfect in itself
Men’s thoughts must borrow rather than bestow.
III
Now standing on this hedgeside path,
Up which the evening winds are blowing
Wildly from the lingering lines
Of sunset o’er the hills;
Unaided by one motive thought,
My spirit with a strange impulsion
Rises, like a fledgling,
Whose wings are not mature, but still
Supported by its strong desire
Beats up its native air and leaves
The tender mother’s nest.
Great music under heaven is made,
And in the track of rushing darkness
Comes the solemn shape of night,
And broods above the earth.
A thing of Nature am I now,
Abroad, without a sense or feeling
Born not of her bosom;
Content with all her truths and fates;
Ev’n as yon strip of grass that bows
Above the new-born violet bloom,
And sings with wood and field.
IV
Lo, as a tree, whose wintry twigs
Drink in the sun with fibrous joy,
And down into its dampest roots
Thrills quickened with the draught of life,
I wake unto the dawn, and leave my griefs to drowse.
I rise and drink the fresh sweet air:
Each draught a future bud of Spring;
Each glance of blue a birth of green;
I will not mimic yonder oak
That dallies with dead leaves ev’n while the primrose peeps.
But full of these warm-whispering beams,
Like Memnon in his mother’s eye,—
Aurora! when the statue stone
Moaned soft to her pathetic touch,—
My soul shall own its parent in the founts of day!