We tread on legends all this storied land:
Here flows a ferry through the mountains black
With pinewood galleries far withdrawing back;
Man's heart is also here, and dwarfs those summits grand:
The virgin martyrs, half the ferry o'er,
By ruthless men were plunged into the tide,
Singing their holy psalm; away it died,
Bubbling in death. The moon a blood-red sorrow wore.
And aye, they tell, when, wan and all forlorn,
Sickening she looks upon our world of wrong,
And would be gone for ever, far along
The mournful ferry dim that dying psalm is borne.
Yon peasant swarth, his day of labour done,
Pipes at his cottage door; his wife sits by,
Dancing their baby to the minstrelsy:
To temperate gladness they their sacred right have won.
Rest after toil, sweet healing after pain;
Repent, and so be loved, O stubborn-viced—
The Tishbite girt severe runs before Christ:
Such is the double law complete to mortal men.
Yon lordly pine bends his complying head
To eve's soft breath, and the stupendous cloud
Shifts silently: Man's world is fitliest bowed
By power when gently used: Force not, love thou instead.
One cool green gleam on yonder woodland high,
And day retires; grey twilight folds with dew
The hooded flowers; in gulfs of darkening blue
The starry worlds come out to Contemplation's eye.
Home now to sleep. No part in all man's frame
But has its double uses, firm to keep,
Help this, round that, and beautify: of sleep,
Complex of sweet designs, how finely 'tis the same.
Touched with the solemn harmonies of night,
Down do we lie our spirits to repair,
And, fresh ourselves, make morning fresh and fair;
Sleep too our Father gave to soften death's affright:
In sleep we lapse and lose ourselves away,
And thus each night our death do we rehearse.
O, at the last may we the oblivion pierce
Of death, as aye of sleep, and rise unto the day.