Classic Poem

What does it take
A day to make, —
A day at the Bear Camp Ossipee?
White clouds a-sail in the shining blue,
Dropping a shadow to dredge the lands;
A mountain-wind, and a marching storm,
And a sound in the trees like waves on sands;
A mist to soften the shaggy side
Of the great green hill, till it lies as dim
As the hills in a childhood memory;
The crags and the ledges silver-chased,
Where yesterday's rainy runlets raced;
The back of an upland pasture steep,
With delicate fern-beds notching wide
The dark wood-line where the birches keep
Candlemas all the summer-tide;
Brown-flashing across the meadow bright
The stream that gems its malachite;
And, watching his valley, Chocorua grim,
And a golden sunset watching him!

Add — fifty lives of young and old,
Of tired and sad, of strong and bold,
And every heart a deeper sea
Than its own owner dreams can be;
Add eyes whose glances have the law
Of coursing planets in their draw;
Add careless hands that touch and part,
And hands that greet with a heaven's sense;
Add little children in their glee
Uprunning to a mother's knee,
Their earliest altar; add her heart,
Their feeble, brooding Providence: —

And this to that, and thou shalt see
What goes to summer chemistry, —
What the God takes,
Each time he makes
One summer-day at Ossipee.