SECOND SIGHT
They lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their cool throats sweet with honey-dew
Beneath their leafy hoods—
No dream they dream but hath been true
Here in the solitudes.
Star trillium, in the underbrush,
In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
Of Summer’s quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
Of Autumn’s tragic pace.
This one hath heard the dryad’s sighs
Behind the covering bark;
That one hath felt the satyr’s eyes
Gleam through the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the Naiad rise
In waters all a-spark.
I bend my soul unto them, stilled
In worship man hath lost:—
The old-world myths that science killed
Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are filled
With Beauty’s pagan ghost.
And with new eyes I seem to see
The world these live within,—
A shuttered world of mystery,
Where unreal forms begin
Real forms of ideality
That have no unreal kin.
SUCCESS
How some succeed, who have least need,
In that they make no effort for!
And pluck, where others pluck a weed,
The burning blossom of a star,
Grown from no earthly seed.
For some shall reap who never sow;
And some shall toil and ne’er attain—
What boots it, in ourselves to know
Such labor here is not in vain,
When we still see it so!