THOSE evening clouds, that setting ray,
And beauteous tints serve to display
Their great Creator's praise;
Then let the short-lived thing called man,
Whose life's comprised within a span,
To Him his homage raise.
We often praise the evening clouds,
And tints so gay and bold,
But seldom think upon our God,
Who tinged these clouds with gold.
BEAUTIFUL Elm, with a maidenly form,
That smiles in the sunlight and swings in the storm,
Has shaded my window for many a year,
And grown, like a sister, more lovely and dear.
It whispers me dreams in the soft Summer days,
It sprinkles my table with gold-floating rays;
It sings me its music through all the hushed night,
And shows me a glimpse of the stars' stealthy light;
It curtains the glare of the wakening dawn,
And woos back the dusk on the shadowy lawn.
Oh, long have I loved thee, my Elm, gentle Elm !
Thou standest as proud as the queen of a realm,
And winningly wavest thy soft leafy arms,
Like a beautiful maid who is conscious of charms.
Oh, oft have I leaned on thy rough-rinded breast,
And thought of it oft as an iron-like vest-
No breast-plate of steel, but a corslet of bark
That hid the white limbs of my Joan of Arc!
Shout, shout to thy brothers, the forests, I said,
And lead out the trees with a soldierly tread;
Thou art armed to the head, and hast many a plume,—
So marshal the trees and avert their sad doom;
Enroll all their squadrons and lead out the van,
And turn the swift axe on your murderer-man!
But ah, thus I said evermore,-ah, the trees,
Though they wail in the tempest and sing in the breeze
Have never a soul, and are rooted in earth!
They live and they die where they spring into birth;
The stories of Dryads are only a dream,
And trees are no more than they outwardly seem.
HO would have thought a thing so slight,
So frail a birth of warmth and light,
A thing as weak as fear or shame,
Bearing thy weakness in thy name—
Who would have thought of seeing thee,
Thou delicate Anemone !
What power has given thee to outlast
The pelting rain, the driving blast—
Thou wilt the prayer of faithful love receive,
Let it be so with me! I was a child-
Of large belief, though froward, wild.
Gladly I listened to the holy word,
And deemed my little prayers to God were heard.
All things I loved, however strange or odd,
As deeming all things were beloved by God.
In youth and manhood's careful sultry hours,
The garden of my youth bore many flowers
That now are faded; but my early faith,
Though thinner far than vapor, spectre, wraith,
Lighter than aught the rude wind blows away,
Has yet outlived the rude tempestuous day,
And may remain, a witness of the Spring,
A sweet, a holy, and a lovely thing;
The promise of another Spring to me,
My lovely, lone, and lost Anemone !
AY, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow weak, and the weak suns grow brief,
And the year smiles as it draws near its death,
Wind of the sunny south! Oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age, released from care,
Journeying in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices, ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.
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