Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly

The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,

And buds, and blossoms like the rest.

THE SHELL

(From "Maud ")

By Alfred Tennyson

I

EE what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!

II

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.

III

The tiny cell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will

That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?

IV

Slight, to be crush'd with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,

Here on the Breton strand!

"I AM AN ACME OF THINGS

I

ACCOMPLISHED"

(From "Walt Whitman")

By Walt Whitman

AM an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs;

On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps;

All below duly travell'd, and still I mount and

mount.

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me;
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing - I know
I was even there;

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,

And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

Long I was hugg'd close long and long.

Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen ;

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings; They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me.

My embryo has never been torpid — nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete

and delight me ;

Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul.

BELIEVE a leaf of grass

is no

less than the journey-work

of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, of the wren,

and the egg

And the tree-toad is a chefd'œuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors

of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,

And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer's girl boiling her iron teakettle and baking short-cake.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,

And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all

over,

And have distanced what is behind me for good

reasons,

And call anything close again, when I desire it.

In vain the speeding or shyness;

In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach;

In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones

;

In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes;

In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low;

In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky;

In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs ;

In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the

woods;

In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Lab

rador;

I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.