Part 9 (1/2)

And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: ”Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee.

”Come, wander with me,” she said, ”Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the ma.n.u.scripts of G.o.d.”

And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvelous tale.

So she keeps him still a child, And will not let him go, Though at times his heart beats wild For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;

Though at times he hears in his dreams The Ranz des Vaches of old, And the rush of mountain streams From the glaciers clear and cold;

And the mother at home says, ”Hark!

For his voice I listen and yearn; It is growing late and dark, And my boy does not return!”

HYMN TO THE NIGHT

I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, The manifold, soft chimes, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,-- From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!

Descend with broad-winged flight, The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night!

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AMERICA, 1819-1891

LONGING

Of all the myriad moods of mind That through the soul come thronging, Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, So beautiful as Longing?

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment.

Still, through our paltry stir and strife, Glows down the wished Ideal, And Longing molds in clay what Life Carves in the marble Real; To let the new life in, we know, Desire must ope the portal; Perhaps the longing to be so Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is G.o.d's fresh heavenward will With our poor earthward striving; We quench it that we may be still Content with merely living: But, would we learn that heart's full scope Which we are hourly wronging, Our lives must climb from hope to hope And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise Good G.o.d not only reckons The moments when we tread His ways, But when the spirit beckons,-- That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action.

THE FINDING OF THE LYRE

There lay upon the ocean's sh.o.r.e What once a tortoise served to cover.

A year and more, with rush and roar, The surf had rolled it over, Had played with it, and flung it by, As wind and weather might decide it, Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dry Cheap burial might provide it.