Classic Poem

'T IS late November now and yet the hill,
Warmed with the sun, invites my willing feet,
And calls me with a thousand notes, that thrill
Like chords of music — cadences that beat
The trembling air as with immortal wings.
This is the mingled harmony that leaps
For ever from the quick vibrating strings
Of some great golden harp that Nature keeps
Deep hidden in her bosom's mystery —
So strangely tender — wailing to be free,
With such enchantment in the rhythmic sway
And surge of its entrancing melody;
That careless zephyrs won from wanton play,
Sink spell-bound with the restful peace it brings. —
And so forget to bear the sounds away.

It murmurs in the rustling leaves I tread,
It stirs the sleeping grass that fondly still
Dreams of the summer gone — and overhead
I hear it in the branches of the trees.
It moves along the brook, whose dimpled tide
Repeats in liquid numbers of its own,
The lesson it has learned — an undertone
Steals on the fragrant fields and through the dead
Dry weeds that tremble with each passing breeze,
That hurries swiftly by. I know this stone,
Which seems so silent, feels a joyous thrill
Imparted from the briers that touch its side,
Whose few dark leaves still blush with deepest purple dyed.
Oh! Nature, thou art beautiful indeed,
Perfection on perfection thou dost build
Upon the ruined works of mighty men.
To man thou say'st: " Of thee I have not need.
I am myself — all is as I have willed. "
And what is art of chisel, brush, or pen,
But forms wherein man would interpret thee?
Man and his arts are thine. A stone — a weed
Will long outlast his best — and is he then
A being to be proud of being feared?
Man is at best but an inspired clod,
The tiller and the ground which he has tilled
Are one — obedient to the same decree —
He is, and will be — but what he has been —
The slave of Nature, who shall set him free.
Of what avails the temple and the creed?
Dust is but dust — and being so, must be.
And Nature still will sow her careless seed
And grow her meanest plants where man has reared
His sacred altars — and with bended knee
Has sought, with forms, to worship Nature's God —
Man's dream is short, above, but long, beneath the sod.
Be comforted, be comforted, my soul,
This unrelenting Nature still is kind
She hath her helmet and her gorgon shield,
And in her hand the ready naked blade;
She hath her sandals and her greaves of gold,
For nothing will her steady march be stayed.
Assured of victory she takes the field.
But like immortal Pallas, famed of old —
Beneath her helmet lives the guiding mind;
Beneath her corslet is a woman's breast.
He must not fight, but love, who would control,
So in her wisdom we shall comfort find,
And in her bosom we at last shall rest —
Be comforted, be comforted — God knoweth best.