Art and Science.
Dian, with silver robe from her shoulders flung,
And Fundy, with his tidal arc and gauge,
Beating as a great pendulum forth-swung,
The seconds of the geologic age.
[THE OLD FISHER'S SONG.]
From the broad-shouldered Cobequids we saw
Prone Blomidon in lotos-eyed repose,
The immemorial vigil lapst to dream.
The Basin lay as if in calm of swoon.
Upon the bosom of the breathing tide
The drifting ships, wide-winged in air, in sea,
Sailed double on a single keel—a ship
In either stilly heaven, above, beneath.
The day was warm, and as we lay beside
The woodland brook and watched the pinfish play,
We saw the sky within a silver pool,
Like a great vase of lapis lazuli
Veined with the feathery spray of cirrus cloud,
While cumuli in spotless beauty bloomed
Therein—a garden of the gods! And all
The pool seemed fragrant with a myriad sweets.
"There's promise of fair morrow," Harold said,
"The witness of the sea and wood is one:
The hissing brine, moonstruck, comes vengeful up
Its iron gateways with remorseless flood—
This little brook in rage and foam tears through
A hundred hills—each sets a mirror at
Our feet of beauty's self. And so, I ween,
The fury of the age will end as full
Of calm as are this sea and pool of heaven."
And breasting an old path to the carved shore
Where fell at ebb the sea-green billows clear,—
A path o'ertangled thick with alder hung
With tags that take the rich brown Vandyke loved,
And cool with dusky air in which, all still,
Eye-bright and fronded fern and lichened spruce
Swam deep in voiceless sea of wildwood balm—
My eye had sight of emerald moss and bells
That wreathed the bearded rocks that once were fire.
"Ho! here is where the fisher lives who sings
All day while fingering nets, and chants the tide
To sleep," cried Harold, "as he tends his seines
At night. Some three-score souls like his would make
A state, and one such state the golden age.
This old man never knows when spring is past,
But pipes a robin song from May to May,
A fresh-blown breezy song of coming good—
He's piping now!"
Heirs of the century,
Sons of the next,
Hearten your spirits,
Your souls keep unvext.
There's an ebb in the tide,
There's an open sea wide,
But where sun and star dart,
You've a trustworthy chart.