Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride Report not. No fantastic carvings show The boast of our vain race to change the form Of thy fair works. But Thou art here Thou fill'st 41 The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; Thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground, The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with Thee. Here is continual worship; - Nature, here, In the tranquillity that Thou dost love, Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, From perch to perch, the solitary bird Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs, Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots 50 Stand in their beauty by. 1 These are lines of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible to speak too highly.' (POE.) 2 Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles 'June.' The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous - nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul-while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. (POE.) Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air, Like to a good old age released from care, Journeying, in long serenity, away. In such a bright, late quiet, would that I 3 Bryant died in the month of June (1878), and was buried in the beautiful village cemetery at Roslyn, Long Island. Thou hast my better years; Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the kind, Yielded to thee with tears- My spirit yearns to bring The lost ones back — yearns with desire Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, intense, And struggles hard to wring Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. In vain; thy gates deny And her, who, still and cold, Fills the next grave-the beautiful and 20 1828. All passage save to those who hence de |