Faints unheeded for a season,
Then outwings the farthest star,
To the wisdom and the stillness
Where thy consummations are.
This sounds the keynote to The Book of the Native, which is equally concerned with the enigmas of the soul and the mysteries of nature. The questing spirit is abroad in it; the unquenched faith, the vitality, the hidden import of life is in it; and while its metaphysics do not go to the point of developing a definite philosophy, they set one to thinking for himself, which is a better service. “Origins,” a speculation as to our coming from “the enigmatic Will,” and the “Unsleeping,” a vision of the Force brooding over life,—are among the strongest poems of this motive. To cite the second:
I soothe to unimagined sleep
The sunless bases of the deep,
And then I stir the aching tide
That gropes in its reluctant side.
I heave aloft the smoking hill: