Whether the down purpled with thyme they tread,
Woodland, or marge of brook, or pathway sweet
By the grave rustling of the heavy wheat,
Singing to thankful souls the song of coming bread.
The restless white-throat warbles through the copse;
High sits the thrush and pipes the tree upon;
Cloud-flushed the west, a sunny shower comes on;
Up goes the twinkling lark through the clear slanting drops.
In straight stiff lines sweet Nature will not run:
The lark comes down—mute now, wings closed, no check,
Sheer down he drops; but back he curves his neck;
Look, too, he curves his fall just ere his nest be won.
Here stands The Suffering Elm: in days of yore
Three martyrs hung upon its bending bough;
Its sympathetic side, from then till now
Weeping itself away, drops from that issuing sore.
Dryads, and Hamadryads; bloody groans,
Bubbling for vent, when twigs are torn away
In haunted groves; incessant, night and day,
Gnarled in the knotted oak, the pent-up spirit's moans;
And yonder trembling aspen, never still,
Since of its wood the rueful Cross was made;—
All these, incarnated by Fancy's aid,
Are but extended Man, in life, and heart, and will.
Your eye still shifting to the setting sun,
The diamond drops upon the glistening thorns
Are topazes and emeralds by turns;
Twinkling they shake, and aye they tremble into one.
Clouds press the sinking orb: he strikes a mist
Of showery purple on the forest tops,
The western meadows, and the skirting slopes;
Down comes the stream a lapse of living amethyst.
Beauty for man, O glory! yet how vain,
Were there no higher love to correspond,
Lifting us up, our little time beyond,
Up from the dust of death, up to God's face again.
The Word apart: Nature ne'er made, in whim,
An organ but for use: our longing hope
Of life immortal, like our hand, has scope
To grasp the things which are: that life is thus no dream.