Or the flight of little birds,
As they pass from us away,
With their sweet notes of gladness,
That we miss from day to day?
The crickets’ ceaseless chanting
In the serried grass and flowers,
Wakening olden memories
Of the long, long silent hours?
The sombre hues that gather
O’er purpling hill and dell,
The flowing stream and fountain
Seem e’er haunted like a spell.
And many hearts are haunted,
Saddened and thoughtful grown;
Dead leaves are around them lying,
And the warmth of life is flown.
Is it the moaning billows
That surge o’er the lonely sea
Whose mournful tones are ever
Pleading sobbingly to me
Of a brother that I loved?
Lost where the wild tempest sweeps,
Unfathomable and lone
Is the bier where he now sleeps.
And when we walk at even
Along the dim-lit shore,
We hear weird voices whisper,
“Nevermore! no, nevermore!”
There in the holy silence,
Bowed to a tender power,
Passionate dreams enfold us
In that pale, mystical hour.
We gaze far out and upward
Toward God’s great vaulted dome,
Where stars in their bright splendor
Are gleaming one by one.
They seem so pure and holy
In their calm, silvery light;
We feel subdued and lowly
’Neath their pathless flight.
I think it is thus with us:
The great Creator’s power
Is ever present with us
In leaf, and tree, and flower.
The sighing of the lone winds,
And the moaning of the sea,
All join in one grand anthem
Of the great eternity.
SPRING.
The spring has come! Once more I hear
The song-birds carol free,
The gentle winds play o’er my brow
In whisp’ring melody.
A glad refrain from hill and dell,
From mountain, stream, and sea,
Pours joyously o’er all the land,
From winter’s shackles free.