And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played;
Their thoughts I cannot measure
But the least motion which they made,
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

V

TREES

THE MARSHES OF GLYNN*

BY SIDNEY LANIER

GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs

Emerald twilights

Virginal shy lights,

Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green

colonnades

Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades,

That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from Chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves —

Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,

*From "The Poems of Sidney Lanier." Copyright 1884, 1891, by Mary D. Lanier; published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the

vine,

While the riotous noonday sun of the June-day long did shine

Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in

mine;

But now when the noon is no more, and riot

is rest,

And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the

West,

And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem

Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,

And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke

Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I

know,

And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,

That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the Marshes of Glynn

Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore

When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,