Nor yet alone in earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen:
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, –
Eternal wisdom still the same!
The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves,
Whose streams of brightening purple rush,
Fired with a new and livelier blush,2
While all their burden of decay
The ebbing current steals away,
And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.
No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
For ever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net 5
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then, kindling each decaying part,
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.
But warmed with that unchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame,
3 The ebbing current, the veins. 4 that throbbing slave.
1 its hidden caves, the lungs. 2 brightening purple... blush: that is, the arterial blood oxygen-heart. ated by the air.
5 the woven net, etc. Explain.
Its living marbles 1 jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the Master's own.
See how yon beam of seeming white
Is braided out of seven-hued light,2
Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear
With music it is heaven to hear.
Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds; 4
That feels sensation's faintest thrill,
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells!
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads! 5
1 Its living marbles, etc. That 4 the cloven sphere ... folds. is, the bony framework, and more specially the spinal column. Explain what is meant by "glistening band" and "silvery thong." 2 seeming white light. White reflects to the eyes all the rays of the spectrum combined.
8 lucid globes: that is, the eyes.
By this figurative expression is meant, of course, the brain, which is "cloven" or divided by the longitudinal fissure into two hemispheres, irregularly marked by convolutions (“folds").
5 its hollow glassy threads. Explain.
O Father! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,1
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms,
And mold it into heavenly forms!
4. THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE.
HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,2 That was built in such a logical way 3
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it- Ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,-
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.5
1 have sapped... life. Show the 5 Snuffy... hive. On what is appropriateness of the image. How is the same metaphor continued? 2 one-hoss shay. Change from the dialect to the normal form.
3 logical way. Why a "logical" way, is explained in stanza 4.
4 Georgius Secundus. Latin for George the Second, king of Eng
land from 1727 to 1760.
this forcible metaphor founded? The epithet "snuffy" refers to the king's fondness for snuff, a trait noted by the historians. The explanation of the reference to the "German hive" is found in the fact that George II. was son of George I., the first of the Hanoverian line of English sovereigns.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,1
And Braddock's army was done so brown,2
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.3
Now, in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,-
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, lurking still
Find it somewhere you must and will,-
Above or below, or within or without,-
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou"),
He would build one shay to beat the town
'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it couldn't break daown. 'Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
1 Lisbon-town down. In the great earthquake of Lisbon (Nov. 1, 1755), about forty thousand persons lost their lives, and most of the city was destroyed.
2 Braddock's... brown. Braddock's defeat took place July 9, 1155. Explain the metaphor "done
so brown." Would this colloquialism be suitable in a serious poem?
3 It was shay. Note the droll effect produced by making the completion of the "one-hoss shay" coincident in time with convulsions of nature and the shock of armies.
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,-
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "settler's ellum,"
Last of its timber, they couldn't sell 'em,
Never an ax had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through."-
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew."
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
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