O limèd soul! that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! make assay: We know what we are, but know not what we Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart, with strings
The Prairie StatesA newer Garden of Creation -no primal solitude:
Dense, joyous, modern, populous
millions cities and farms,
With iron interlaced, composite. tied many in one, By all the world contributed - Freedom's and Laws and Thrift's society, The crown and teeming Paradise, so far of Time's accumulations,
To justify the Past
THE World is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. - Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
THE bubbling brook doth leap when I come by,
Because my feet find measure with its call;
The birds know when the friend they love is nigh, For I am known to them, both great and small. The flower that on the lonely hillside grows Expects me there when spring its bloom has given; And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows,
And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven; For he who with his Maker walks aright, Shall be their lord as Adam was before;
His ear shall catch each sound with new delight, Each object wear the dress that then it wore; And he, as when erect in soul he stood, Hear from his Father's lips that all is good.
COME TO THESE SCENES OF PEACE.
COME to these scenes of peace, Where, to rivers murmuring, The sweet birds all the summer sing, Where cares and toil and sadness cease! Stranger, does thy heart deplore Friends whom thou wilt see no more?
Does thy wounded spirit prove Pangs of hopeless, severed love? Thee the stream that gushes clear, Thee the birds that carol near Shall soothe, as silent thou dost lie And dream of their wild lullaby; Come to bless these scenes of peace, Where cares and toil and sadness cease.
WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.
FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild, secluded scene impress The landscape with the quiet of the sky. Thoughts of more deep seclusion, and connect Here, under this dark sycamore, and view The day is come when I again repose These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye; But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind,
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