A QUEEN rejoices in her peers, And wary Nature knows her own By court and city, dale and down, And like a lover volunteers, And to her son will treasures more And more to purpose freely pour In one wood walk, than learned men Can find with glass in ten times ten.
WHO saw the hid beginnings When Chaos and Order strove,
Or who can date the morning The purple flaming of love?
I saw the hid beginnings
When Chaos and Order strove, And I can date the morning prime And purple flame of love.
Song breathed from all the forest, The total air was fame;
It seemed the world was all torches That suddenly caught the flame.
Is there never a retroscope mirror
In the realms and corners of space
That can give us a glimpse of the battle And the soldiers face to face?
Sit here on the basalt ranges Where twisted hills betray The seat of the world-old Forces Who wrestled here on a day.
When the purple flame shoots up, And Love ascends his throne,
I cannot hear your songs, O birds, For the witchery of my own.
And every human heart
Still keeps that golden day And rings the bells of jubilee On its own First of May.
I HAVE trod this path a hundred times With idle footsteps, crooning rhymes. I know each nest and web-worm's tent, The fox-hole which the woodchucks rent, Maple and oak, the old Divan Self-planted twice, like the banian.
I know not why I came again Unless to learn it ten times ten. To read the sense the woods impart You must bring the throbbing heart. Love is aye the counterforce, Terror and Hope and wild Remorse, Newest knowledge, fiery thought, Or Duty to grand purpose wrought. Wandering yester morn the brake, I reached this heath beside the lake, And oh, the wonder of the power, The deeper secret of the hour! Nature, the supplement of man, His hidden sense interpret can; What friend to friend cannot convey Shall the dumb bird instructed say. Passing yonder oak, I heard Sharp accents of my woodland bird; I watched the singer with delight, But mark what changed my joy to fright, - When that bird sang, I gave the theme, That wood-bird sang my last night's dream, A brown wren was the Daniel
That pierced my trance its drift to tell, Knew my quarrel, how and why, Published it to lake and sky, Told every word and syllable In his flippant chirping babble, All my wrath and all my shames, Nay, God is witness, gave the names.
A PATCH of meadow upland Reached by a mile of road, Soothed by the voice of waters, With birds and flowers bestowed.
Hither I come for strength
Which well it can supply,
For Love draws might from terrene force And potencies of sky.
The tremulous battery Earth
Responds to the touch of man;
It thrills to the antipodes,
From Boston to Japan.
IN my garden three ways meet, Thrice the spot is blest;
Hermit thrush comes there to build,
Carrier doves to nest.
There broad-armed oaks, the copses' maze, The cold sea-wind detain;
1 This poem represents the early form of My Garden, which, in years, grew from this beginning.
Here sultry Summer over-stays When Autumn chills the plain.
Self-sown my stately garden grows; The winds and wind-blown seed, Cold April rain and colder snows My hedges plant and feed.
From mountains far and valleys near The harvests sown to-day Thrive in all weathers without fear, Wild planters, plant away!
In cities high the careful crowds
Of woe-worn mortals darkling go,
But in these sunny solitudes
My quiet roses blow.
Methought the sky looked scornful down On all was base in man,
And airy tongues did taunt the town, "Achieve our peace who can!"
What need I holier dew
Than Walden's haunted wave, Distilled from heaven's alembic blue, Steeped in each forest cave?
If Thought unlock her mysteries, If Friendship on me smile, I walk in marble galleries, I talk with kings the while.
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