EARTH AND HER PRAISERS.

The Earth is old;

Six thousand winters make her heart a-cold;

The sceptre slanteth from her palsied hold.

She saith, “‘ Las me! God's word that I was‘ good’

Is taken back to heaven,

From whence when any sound comes, I am riven

By some sharp bolt; and now no angel would

Descend with sweet dew-silence on my mountains,

To glorify the lovely river fountains

That gush along their side:

I see — O weary change!— I see instead

This human wrath and pride,

These thrones and tombs, judicial wrong and blood,

And bitter words are poured upon mine head —

‘ O Earth! thou art a stage for tricks unholy,

A church for most remorseful melancholy;

Thou art so spoilt, we should forget we had

An Eden in thee, wert thou not so sad!’

Sweet children, I am old! ye, every one,

Do keep me from a portion of my sun.

Give praise in change for brightness!

That I may shake my hills in infiniteness

Of breezy laughter, as in youthful mirth,

To hear Earth's sons and daughters praising Earth.”

Whereupon a child began

With spirit running up to man

As by angels’ shining ladder,

( May he find no cloud above! )

Seeming he had ne'er been sadder

All his days than now,

Sitting in the chestnut grove,

With that joyous overflow

Of smiling from his mouth o'er brow

And cheek and chin, as if the breeze

Leaning tricksy from the trees

To part his golden hairs, had blown

Into an hundred smiles that one.

“O rare, rare Earth!” he saith,

“I will praise thee presently;

Not to-day; I have no breath:

I have hunted squirrels three —

Two ran down in the furzy hollow

Where I could not see nor follow,

One sits at the top of the filbert-tree,

With a yellow nut and a mock at me:

Presently it shall be done!

When I see which way these two have run,

When the mocking one at the filbert-top

Shall leap a-down and beside me stop,

Then, rare Earth, rare Earth,

Will I pause, having known thy worth,

To say all good of thee!”

Next a lover,— with a dream

‘ Neath his waking eyelids hidden,

And a frequent sigh unbidden,

And an idlesse all the day

Beside a wandering stream,

And a silence that is made

Of a word he dares not say,—

Shakes slow his pensive head:

“Earth, Earth!” saith he,

“If spirits, like thy roses, grew

On one stalk, and winds austere

Could but only blow them near,

To share each other's dew;—

If, when summer rains agree

To beautify thy hills, I knew

Looking off them I might see

Some one very beauteous too,—

Then Earth,” saith he,

“I would praise... nay, nay — not thee!”

Will the pedant name her next?

Crabbed with a crabbed text

Sits he in his study nook,

With his elbow on a book,

And with stately crossed knees,

And a wrinkle deeply thrid

Through his lowering brow,

Caused by making proofs enow

That Plato in “Parmenides”

Meant the same Spinoza did,—

Or, that an hundred of the groping

Like himself, had made one Homer,

Homeros being a misnomer

What hath he to do with praise

Of Earth or aught? Whene'er the sloping

Sunbeams through his window daze

His eyes off from the learned phrase,

Straightway he draws close the curtain.

May abstraction keep him dumb!

Were his lips to ope,‘ t is certain

“Derivatum est” would come.

Then a mourner moveth pale

In a silence full of wail,

Raising not his sunken head

Because he wandered last that way

With that one beneath the clay:

Weeping not, because that one,

The only one who would have said

“Cease to weep, beloved!” has gone

Whence returneth comfort none.

The silence breaketh suddenly,—

“Earth, I praise thee!” crieth he,

“Thou hast a grave for also me.”

Ha, a poet! know him by

The ecstasy-dilated eye,

Not uncharged with tears that ran

Upward from his heart of man;

By the cheek, from hour to hour,

Kindled bright or sunken wan

With a sense of lonely power;

By the brow uplifted higher

Than others, for more low declining

By the lip which words of fire

Overboiling have burned white

While they gave the nations light:

Ay, in every time and place

Ye may know the poet's face

By the shade or shining.

‘ Neath a golden cloud he stands,

Spreading his impassioned hands.

“O God's Earth!” he saith, “the sign

From the Father-soul to mine

Of all beauteous mysteries,

Of all perfect images

Which, divine in His divine,

In my human only are

Very excellent and fair!

Think not, Earth, that I would raise

Weary forehead in thy praise,

( Weary, that I cannot go

Farther from thy region low,)

If were struck no richer meanings

From thee than thyself. The leaning

Of the close trees o'er the brim

Of a sunshine-haunted stream

Have a sound beneath their leaves,

Not of wind, not of wind,

Which the poet's voice achieves:

The faint mountains, heaped behind,

Have a falling on their tops,

Not of dew, not of dew,

Which the poet's fancy drops:

Viewless things his eyes can view

Driftings of his dream do light

All the skies by day and night,

And the seas that deepest roll

Carry murmurs of his soul.

‘ Earth, I praise thee! praise thou me!

God perfecteth his creation

With this recipient poet-passion,

And makes the beautiful to be.

I praise thee, O beloved sign,

From the God-soul unto mine!

Praise me, that I cast on thee

The cunning sweet interpretation,

The help and glory and dilation

Of mine immortality!”

There was silence. None did dare

To use again the spoken air

Of that far-charming voice, until

A Christian resting on the hill,

With a thoughtful smile subdued

( Seeming learnt in solitude )

Which a weeper might have viewed

Without new tears, did softly say,

And looked up unto heaven alway

While he praised the Earth —

“O Earth,

I count the praises thou art worth,

By thy waves that move aloud,

By thy hills against the cloud,

By thy valleys warm and green,

By the copses’ elms between,

By their birds which, like a sprite

Scattered by a strong delight

Into fragments musical,

Stir and sing in every bush;

By thy silver founts that fall,

As if to entice the stars at night

To thine heart; by grass and rush,

And little weeds the children pull,

Mistook for flowers!

— Oh, beautiful

Art thou, Earth, albeit worse

Than in heaven is called good!

Good to us, that we may know

Meekly from thy good to go;

While the holy, crying Blood

Puts its music kind and low

‘ Twixt such ears as are not dull,

And thine ancient curse!

“Praised be the mosses soft

In thy forest pathways oft,

And the thorns, which make us think

Of the thornless river-brink

Where the ransomed tread:

Praised be thy sunny gleams,

And the storm, that worketh dreams

Of calm unfinished:

Praised be thine active days,

And thy night-time's solemn need,

When in God's dear book we read

No night shall be therein:

Praised be thy dwellings warm

By household faggot's cheerful blaze,

Where, to hear of pardoned sin,

Pauseth oft the merry din,

Save the babe's upon the arm

Who croweth to the crackling wood:

Yea, and, better understood,

Praised be thy dwellings cold,

Hid beneath the churchyard mould,

Where the bodies of the saints

Separate from earthly taints

Lie asleep, in blessing bound,

Waiting for the trumpet's sound

To free them into blessing;— none

Weeping more beneath the sun,

Though dangerous words of human love

Be graven very near, above.

“Earth, we Christians praise thee thus,

Even for the change that comes

With a grief from thee to us:

For thy cradles and thy tombs,

For the pleasant corn and wine

And summer-heat; and also for

The frost upon the sycamore

And hail upon the vine!”