Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor :
“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields ;-
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,-
You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,
I will pay you in the grave,
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough ;
Hope in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I
go; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment's good After long pain — with all your love, This you never told me of.”
Radiant sister of the Day,
Awake! arise ! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the sun ;
Where the lawns and pastures be,
And the sandhills of the sea ; –
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.
TO JANE — THE RECOLLECTION.
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise !
Up to thy wonted work ! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled, -
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.
We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep,
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced, And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own ;
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods
may
be.
How calm it was ! — the silence there
By such a chain was bound That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness ;
The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew. There seemed from the remotest seat Of the white mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced, -
A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life,
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife ;
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there,
Was one fair form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,
Each seemed as 'twere a little sky
Gulphed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light,
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day -
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
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