All are needed by each one-
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder-bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even.
He sings the song, but it pleases not now;
For I did not bring home the river and sky:
He sang to my ear-they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Grected their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam-
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild upros
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As mid the virgin train she strayed;
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage
The gay enchantment was undone-
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
"Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat
I leave it behind with the games of youth."
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs ;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and furs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;
Beauty through my senses stole
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
GOOD-BY, PROUD WORLD!
GOOD-BY, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou 'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam,
A river-ark on the ocean's brine;
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I'm going home.
Good-by to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet:
To those who go, and those who come;
Good-by, proud world! I'm going home,
I am going to my own hearth-stone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone-
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod
A spot that is sacred to thought and GOD.
Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man ;
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan ;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with GOD may meet!
ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heavens,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, cnclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry,
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door,
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work.
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
William Ross Wallace.
THE LIBERTY-BELL. *
A SOUND like the sound of a tempest rolled,
And the heart of a people stirred,
For the bell of Freedom, at midnight tolled,
Through a fettered land was heard:
And the chime still rung
From its iron tongue,
Steadily swaying to and fro;
*Rung in Philadelphia, at the Declaration of Independence.
And to some it came
As a breath of flame,
And to some as a sound of woe.
Upon the tall mountain, upon the tossed wave,
It was heard by the fettered, and heard by the brave,
It was heard in the cottage, and heard in the hall,
And its chime gave a glorious summons to all.
The old sabre was sharpened, the time-rusted blade
Of the bond started out in the pioneer's glade,
Like a herald of wrath-and the host was arrayed!
Along the tall mountain, along the tossed wave,
Swept the ranks of the bond, swept the ranks of the brave
And a shout as of waters went up to the dome,
And a sun-drinking banner unfurled,
Like an archangel's pinion flashed out from his home,
Uttered freedom and hope to the world.
O'er the mountain and tide its magnificent fold,
With a terrible glitter of azure and gold,
In the storm and the sunshine forever unrolled.
It blazed in the valley; it blazed on the mast;
It flew like a comrade abroad with the blast;
And the eyes of whole nations were turned to its light;
And the hearts of the multitude soon
Were swayed by its stars as they shone through the night,
Like an ocean when swayed by the moon.
Again through the midnight that bell thunders out,
And banners and torches are hurried about.
A shout as of waters, a long-uttered cry!
How it leaps, how it leaps from the earth to the sky!
From the sky to the earth, from the earth to the sea,
Hear the chorus re-echoed, "The people are free!"
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