And boatwise dropped o' the convex side 91
And floated down the glassy tide
And clarified and glorified

The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note

Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float,

As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men,

The flute can say them o'er again; 100 Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends,

Man's love ascends

To finer and diviner ends

Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends

For I, e'en I,

As here I lie,

A petal on a harmony,

Demand of Science whence and why Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky? I am not overbold:

I hold

Full powers from Nature manifold.
I speak for each no-tongued tree
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
And dumbly and most wistfully
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 120
Above men's oft-unheeding heads,
And his big blessing downward sheds.
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,
And briery mazes bounding lanes,
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,
And milky stems and sugary veins;
For every long-armed woman-vine
That round a piteous tree doth twine;
For passionate odors, and divine
Pistils, and petals crystalline;
All purities of shady springs,
All shynesses of film-winged things
That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings;
All modesties of mountain-fawns
That leap to covert from wild lawns,
And tremble if the day but dawns;
All sparklings of small beady eyes
Of birds, and sidelong glances wise
Wherewith the jay hints tragedies;

130

140

150

All piquancies of prickly burs,
And smoothnesses of downs and furs,
Of eiders and of minevers;
All limpid honeys that do lie
At stamen-bases, nor deny
The humming-birds' fine roguery,
Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly;
All gracious curves of slender wings,
Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings,
Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings;
Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell
Wherewith in every lonesome dell
Time to himself his hours doth tell;
All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,
Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans,
And night's unearthly under-tones;
All placid lakes and waveless deeps,
All cool reposing mountain-steeps,
Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; ·
Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,
And warmths, and mysteries, and mights,
Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,
-These doth my timid tongue present,
Their mouthpiece and leal instrument
And servant, all love-eloquent.

160

I heard, when "All for love" the violins cried:

So, Nature calls through all her system

wide,

170

Give me thy love, O man, so long denied. Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways,

Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays,

False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise.

The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain;

Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain

Never to lave its love in them again.
Later, a sweet Voice Love thy neighbor said;
Then first the bounds of neighborhood out-
spread

Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 180 Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head:

"All men are neighbors," so the sweet Voice said.

So, when man's arms had circled all man's

race,

The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of

space;

With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace,

Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face:

Yea, man found neighbors in great hills and trees

And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees,

And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these.

But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor!
That stand by the inward-opening door
Trade's hand doth tighten ever more,
And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh
For the outside hills of liberty,
Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky
For Art to make into melody!

190

Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days!
Change thy ways,
Change thy ways;

Let the sweaty laborers file

A little while,

A little while,

Where Art and Nature sing and smile.
Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead?
And hast thou nothing but a head?
I'm all for heart,' the flute-voice said,
And into sudden silence fled,
Like as a blush that while 't is red
Dies to a still, still white instead.

Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds,
Till presently the silence breeds
A little breeze among the reeds

That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds:
Then from the gentle stir and fret
Sings out the melting clarionet,
Like as a lady sings while yet
Her eyes with salty tears are wet.

'O Trade! O Trade!' the Lady said,
'I too will wish thee utterly dead
If all thy heart is in thy head.
For O my God! and O my God!
What shameful ways have women trod
At beckoning of Trade's golden rod !
Alas when sighs are traders' lies,
And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes
Are merchandise!

200

210

220

O purchased lips that kiss with pain!
O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain!
O trafficked hearts that break in twain! 230
-And yet what wonder at my sisters'
crime?

So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime,

Says, Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart-a trade? What! weeping? why?

241

Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery!
I would my lover kneeling at my feet
In humble manliness should cry, O sweet!
I know not if thy heart my heart will greet:
I ask not if thy love my love can meet:
Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say,
I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay:
I do but know I love thee, and I pray
To be thy knight until my dying day.
Woe him that cunning trades in hearts con-
trives!

Base love good women to base loving

drives.

250

If men loved larger, larger were our lives; And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives.'

Unseen, the farmer's boy from round the hill

Whistles a snatch that seeks his soul unsought,

Yearns o'er the sea as tones o'er undersilence yearn.

Heartens his heart as friend befriends his friend less brave,

Makes burn the faiths that cool, and cools the doubts that burn:

I

"Twixt this and dawn, three hours my soul will smite

With prickly seconds, or less tolerably With dull-blade minutes flatwise slapping

me.

The cricket tells straight on his simple

thought

Nay, 't is the cricket's way of being still; The peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught;

Far down the wood, a one-desiring dove

Times me the beating of the heart of love:

And these be all the sounds that mix, each morn,

With waving of the corn.

20

1 Compare the Letters of Sidney Lanier, p. 172, letter from Bayard Taylor.

young Western Night, Just-crowned king, slow riding to thy right, Would God that I might straddle mu

tiny

Calm as thou sitt'st yon never-managed