The murmur of the stone, The pauses in the blowing Are heard from vales beneath; Scarce burdening the air With its poor plaintive breath ; The fragrance of the noon; The swampy mosses tingling; To all such sight and sound These spells his spirit wake; The eagle what he is. So I of lowly birth, A workman on the earth, 1 MOUNTAIN TARNS. Would cast myself apart, The golden-crownèd kings I would not be as they. But with high minds obey. Great emperors forget, The human heart below; But I from mountain throne And leave unto the breeze And cataract to fill With echoes at their will I would in mountain haunt And I would alternate With humors of a child. 85 There is a power to bless In tarns and dreary places; A freshness in the look Of mountains' joyless faces. And I would have my heart A love-anointed thing; And so when life is dull, Because my dreams have frowned, I wander up the rills, To stones and tarns and hills : I go there to be crowned. F. IV. Faber. THE PRESENT PAST. OR us no Past? Nay, what is present sweet FOR ness But yesterdays dissolving in to-day? No Past? It flowers in every new completeness, And scarce from eye and ear can hide away. THE PRESENT PAST. These berries, mottling blue the rocky hollow, Low sings the stream in murmurs faint recalling 87 And as on us it falls, our laughter stilling, For us no Past? Nay, what is present sweetness ? W. C. Gannett, THE HILL SUMMIT. HIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there ΤΗ In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song; And gaze now a belated worshipper. Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, So journeying, of his face at intervals Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls A fiery bush with coruscating hair. And now that I have climbed and won this height, shade And travel the bewildered tracks till night. Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed And see the gold air and the silver fade And the last bird fly into the last light. D. G. Rossetti. THE RECOLLECTION. WE wandered to the pine-forest That skirts the ocean's foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The whispering waves were half asleep, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of heaven lay; |