Classic Poem

Green trees, and grassy fields, and sunset light,
With holy silence, save for rippling leaves,
And birds that twitter of the coming night,
Calling their mates, beneath my cottage eaves,—
These Fate hath granted, for a little space,
To be companions of my pilgrimage,
Filling my grateful heart with Nature's grace.

Not unremembered here life's garish stage,
Nor the wild city's uproar, nor the race
For gain and power, in which all lives engage;
But here remembered dimly, in a dream,
As something fretful that hath ceased to fret,—
Now, when time lapses like a gentle stream,
Hid in the woodland's heart, and I forget
To note its music and its silver gleam.

But never, never let me cease to know,
O whispering woods and daisy-sprinkled grass,
The beauty and the peace that you bestow,
When the wild fevers of ambition pass,
And the worn spirit, in its gloom and grief,
Sinks on your bosom and there finds relief!