To have one moment of thy dawn, Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862] SONG OF NATURE MINE are the night and morning, I hide in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In slumber I am strong. No numbers have counted my tallies, I sit by the shining Fount of Life And ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers, And many a thousand summers I wrote the past in characters Of rock and fire the scroll, The building in the coral sea, The planting of the coal. And thefts from satellites and rings And broken stars I drew, And out of spent and agèd things I formed the world anew; Song of Nature What time the gods kept carnival, Time and Thought were my surveyors, They boiled the sea, and piled the layers But he, the man-child glorious,— The rainbow shines his harbinger, The sunset gleams his smile. My boreal lights leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of the whole. Must time and tide forever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun Too much of donning and doffing, I weary of my robe of snow, I tire of globes and races, What without him is summer's pomp, Or winter's frozen shade? I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait; He comes not to the gate. 1259 Twice I have moulded an image, One in a Judæan manger, One over against the mouths of Nile, I moulded kings and saviors, But fell the starry influence short, Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain. Let war and trade and creeds and song The sunburnt world a man shall breed No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew. Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882] "GREAT NATURE IS AN ARMY GAY" GREAT nature is an army gay, To Mother Nature It swarms within my garden gate; And now the banners all are bright, 1261 Still through the night and through the livelong day The infinite army marches on its remorseless way. Richard Watson Gilder [1844-1909] TO MOTHER NATURE NATURE, in thy largess, grant Taste who will life's roadside cheer Yea, and drain the blood which runs Let me follow up the track Of Love's deathless Zodiac Where Joy climbs among the spheres All the schools have taught me, yet In a golden, far-off Spring,- And the impossible be done When the Wish and Deed grow one! Frederic Lawrence Knowles [1869-1905] THE PIPE OF PAN HERE in this wild, primeval dell Nor din of those who buy and sell, Has broken Nature's perfect spell, May not one hear, who listens well, So virgin and unworldly seem All things in this deep glade Thick-curtained from the noonday beam, |