AT last, beloved Nature, I have met
Thee face to face upon thy breezy hills,
And boldly, where thy inmost bowers were set,
Gazed on thee naked in thy mountain rills :
When first I felt thy breath upon my brow,
Tears of strange ecstasy gushed out like rain,
And with a longing passionate as vain
I strove to clasp thee. But I know not how,
Always before me didst thou seem to glide,
And often from one sunny mountain-side
Upon the next bright peak I saw thee kneel,
And heard thy voice upon the billowy blast, -
But climbing, only reached that shrine to feel
The shadow of a PRESENCE which had passed.
FATE! seek me out some lake far off and lone,
Shut in by wooded hills that steeply rise,
And beautiful with blue, inverted skies,
Where not a breeze but comes with softened tone,
And if the waves awake, they only moan
With a low, sullen music like the rills
That have their home among those happy hills; And let me find
- there left by hands unknown
A bark with rifted sides, and threadbare sail, Just strong enough to bear me from the shore, But not to reach its tree-girt harbor more!
O happy, happy rest! O world of wail! How calmly I would tempt the peaceful deep, And sink with smiling brow into the dreamless sleep!
ARE these wild thoughts thus fettered in my rhymes
Indeed the product of my heart and brain?
How strange that on my ear the rhythmic strain
Falls like faint memories of far-off times!
When did I feel the sorrow, act the part
Which I have striven to shadow forth in song?
In what dead century swept that mingled throng
Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart?
Not in the yesterdays of that still life
Which I have passed so free and far from strife,
But somewhere in this weary world I know,
In some strange land, beneath some Orient clime,
I saw, or shared a martyrdom sublime,
And felt a deeper grief than any later woe.
MARY! I dare not call thy charms divine,
But all the sweetest qualities of earth,
Which constitute an humbler, holier worth,
Grace, gayety, and gentleness are thine.
A grace more glorious than the grace of form,
And moulding less thy motions than thy mind;
A gayety not thoughtless or unkind,
Wild, and yet winning, womanly and warm;
A gentleness of heart that is not weakness,
Persuasive, potent, beautiful in meekness:
Only at times, in some excited hour,
A flash that lights the darkness of thine eyes,
Reveals a secret and a deeper power, -
A spirit he has hardiness who tries.
WHICH are the clouds, and which the mountains? See,
They mix and melt together! Yon blue hill
Looks fleeting as the vapors which distil
Their dews upon its summit, while the free
And far-off clouds, now solid, dark, and still,
An aspect wear of calm eternity.
Each seems the other, as our fancies will,
The cloud a mount, the mount a cloud, and we
Gaze doubtfully. So everywhere on earth
This foothold, where we stand, with slipping feet-
The unsubstantial and substantial meet;
And we are fooled until made wise by Time.
Is not the obvious lesson something worth,
Lady? or have I woven an idle rhyme?
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