And we go, laughing, weeping, through Some gate of crystal dome, While love grows God-like more and more, To greet the wanderer home.
AN AUGUST REVERIE.
There is an autumn sense subdues the air, Though it is August and the season still A part of summer, and the woodlands fair. I hear it in the humming of the mill, I feel it in the rustling of the trees, That scarcely shiver in the passing breeze.
’Tis but a touch of Winter ere his time, A presaging of sleep and icy death, When skies are rich and fields are in their prime, And heaven and earth commingle in a breath:— When hazy airs are stirred with gossamer wings, And in shorn fields the shrill cicada sings.
So comes the slow revolving of the year, The glory of nature ripening to decay, When in those paths by which, through loves austere, All men and beasts and blossoms find their way, By steady easings of the spirit’s dream, From sunlight past the pallid starlight’s beam.
Nor should the spirit sorrow as it passes, Declining slowly by the heights it came; We are but brothers to the birds and grasses, In our brief coming and our end the same:— And though we glory, god-like in our day, Perchance some kindred law their lives obey.
There are a thousand beauties gathered round, The sounds of waters falling over-night, The morning scents that steamed from the fresh ground, The hair-like streaming of the morning light Through early mists and dim, wet woods where brooks Chatter, half-seen, down under mossy nooks.