for him the music of the spheres is in it all. Whether at midnight
The moon, a ghost of her sweet self,
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Creeps up the gray, funereal sky wearily, how wearily,
or morning comes "with gracious breath of sunlight," it is a part of glorious Nature, his star-crowned Queen, his sun-clad goddess.
To no other heart has the pine forest come so near unfolding its immemorial secret. That poet-mind was a wind-harp, and its quivering strings echoed to every message that came from the dim old woods on the "soft whispers of the twilight breeze," the flutterings of the newly awakened morn or the crash of the storm. "The Dryad of the Pine" bent "earth-yearning branches" to give him loving greeting and receive his quick response:
Leaning on thee, I feel the subtlest thrill
Stir thy dusk limbs, tho' all the heavens are still,
And 'neath thy rings of rugged fretwork mark
What seems a heart-throb muffled in the dark.