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Upon the green and rolling forest-tops, And down into the secrets of the glens, And streams that with their bordering thickets strive

To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze,

at once,

Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds, And swarming roads, and there on solitudes

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That only hear the torrent, and the wind, And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice That seems a fragment of some mighty wall,

Built by the hand that fashioned the old world,

To separate its nations, and thrown down When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path

Conducts you up the narrow battlement. Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild

With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, And many a hanging crag. But, to the east,

Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs

Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear

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Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,

These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride

Report not. No fantastic carvings show The boast of our vain race to change the form

Of thy fair works. But Thou art here — Thou fill'st

The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; Thou art in the cooler breath 41 That from the inmost darkness of the place Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,

The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with Thee.

Here is continual worship; - Nature, here, In the tranquillity that Thou dost love, Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, From perch to perch, the solitary bird Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,

Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the

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The generation born with them, nor seemed Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks Around them; and there have been holy

men

Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.

But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. O God! when
Thou

ΤΟΙ

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With all the waters of the firmament, The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods

And drowns the villages; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep and throws himself Upon the continent, and overwhelms

Its cities

who forgets not, at the sight

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Stand in their beauty by.

1 These are lines of whose great rhythmical beauty it is scarcely possible to speak too highly.' (POE.)

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the one which he entitles 'June.' The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous - nothing could be more melodious. The poem has always affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let me remind you that (how or why we know not) this certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. (Por.)

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