"Serene I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst Time or Fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.
"I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.
"Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.
"What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it hath sown,
And garner up its fruits of tears.
"The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.
"The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me."
It is this willingness to wait the results of his efforts without fretting or worrying, to which Mr. Burroughs owes his success. This I think, is what has toned and sweetened his prose and poetry, and makes him so readable. He looks for truth and finds it, and lets it ripen into expression in his mind, and we get the good after the smelting process has completed its work, and the dross all worked off. The above poem has been a true prophesy of his life. His own has come to him, and he is now experiencing the richest reward for his long years of waiting and patience. If too much success comes to us in the beginning of any career, the career is most likely to suffer, or possibly better, we are likely to develop a little vain glory and never return to the proper attitude to truth and service. Mr. Burroughs in his plain simple way has been 'still achieving, still pursuing,' and has long since learned 'to labor and to wait.' His attitude toward his work is almost as pleasant as the work itself. Never in a hurry—though he always manages to get much done. The melancholy days have been 'few and far between' with him, though we do see some few sad but wholesome lines in his poetry. These almost sound like some homesick visitor in a foreign land. The following from the poem, "In Blooming Orchards," is a good illustration of this:
"My thoughts go homeward with the bees;
I dream of youth and happier days—
Of orchards where amid the trees
I loitered free from time's decrees,
And loved the birds and learned their ways.
"Oh, orchard thoughts and orchard sighs,
Ye, too, are born of life's regrets!
The apple bloom I see with eyes
That have grown sad in growing wise,
Through Mays that manhood ne'er forgets."
"The Return" is another of his poems in which this longing for the days of his youth crops out: