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Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb, Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire

Rays out from every grassy spire.

Each slender rush and spike of mullein,

Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,

Transfigured, blaze where'er I

turn.

How yonder Ethiopian hemlock Crowned with his glistening circlet

stands!

What jewels light his swarthy hands!

Here, where the forest opens southward

Between its hospitable pines,

As through a door, the warm sun shines.

The jewels loosen on the branches, And lightly, as the soft winds blow,

Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.

And through the clashing of their cymbals

I hear the old familiar fall
Of water down the rocky wall,

Where, from its wintry prison breaking,

In dark and silence hidden long,
The brook repeats its summer song.

One instant flashing in the sunshine,
Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
Then lost again the ice beneath.

I hear the rabbit lightly leaping,

The foolish screaming of the jay, The chopper's axe-stroke far away; The clamor of some neighboring barnyard,

The lazy cock's belated crow,
Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.

THE BREWING OF SOMA.

"These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra; offer Soma to the drinker of Soma."-VASHISTA, Trans. by MAX MULLER

THE fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke

Up through the green wood curled ; "Bring honey from the hollow oak, Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke, In the childhood of the world.

And brewed they well or brewed they ill,

The priests thrust in their rods, First tasted, and then drank their fill, And shouted, with one voice and will, "Behold the drink of gods!"

They drank, and lo! in heart and brain

A new, glad life began ; The gray of hair grew young again, The sick man laughed away his pain, The cripple leaped and ran.

"Drink, mortals, what the gods have

sent,

Forget your long annoy."

So sang the priests. From tent to tent
The Soma's sacred madness went,
A storm of drunken joy.

Then knew each rapt inebriate

A winged and glorious birth,
Soared upward, with strange joy elate,
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,
And, sobered, sank to earth.

The land with Soma's praises rang;
On Gihon's banks of shade
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang;
In joy of life or mortal pang

All men to Soma prayed.

The morning twilight of the race

Sends down these matin psalms; And still with wondering eyes we trace The simple prayers to Soma's grace, That Vedic verse embalms.

As in that child-world's early year,
Each after age has striven

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