Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only through the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground:
Calm and deep peace on this high wold
And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold:
Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, And crowded farms, and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main:
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall; And in my heart, if calm at all, If any calm, a calm despair:
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
TIME AND ETERNITY.
XLII.
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom Through all its intervital gloom In some long trance should slumber on;
Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the color of the flower:
So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began;