Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,

And travelling often in the cut he makes,

Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,

And all their botany is Latin names.

The old men studied magic in the flowers,

And human fortunes in astronomy,

And an omnipotence in chemistry,

Preferring things to names, for these were men,

Were unitarians of the united world,

And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,

They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes

Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,

And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,

And strangers to the plant and to the mine.

The injured elements say, ‘Not in us;’

And night and day, ocean and continent,

Fire, plant, and mineral say, ‘Not in us,’

And haughtily return us stare for stare.

For we invade them impiously for gain;

We devastate them unreligiously,

And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.

Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us

Only what to our griping toil is due;

But the sweet affluence of love and song,

The rich results of the divine consents

Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,

The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;

And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves

And pirates of the universe, shut out

Daily to a more thin and outward rind,

Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,

The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,

Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,

And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;

And life, shorn of its venerable length,

Even at its greatest space is a defeat,

And dies in anger that it was a dupe;

And, in its highest noon and wantonness,

Is early frugal, like a beggar’s child;

With most unhandsome calculation taught,

Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims

And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,

Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,

Chilled with a miserly comparison

Of the toy’s purchase with the length of life.

MUSKETAQUID

Because I was content with these poor fields,

Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,

And found a home in haunts which others scorned,

The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,

And granted me the freedom of their state,

And in their secret senate have prevailed

With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,

Made moon and planets parties to their bond,

And through my rock-like, solitary wont

Shot million rays of thought and tenderness.

For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring

Visits the valley; – break away the clouds, –

I bathe in the morn’s soft and silvered air,

And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.

Sparrows far off, and nearer, April’s bird,

Blue-coated, – flying before from tree to tree,

Courageous, sing a delicate overture

To lead the tardy concert of the year.

Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;

And wide around, the marriage of the plants

Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain