I.

Blest Power that canst transfigure common things,

And, like the sun, make the clod burst in bloom,—

Unseal the fount so mute this many a day,

And help me sing of Linda! Why of her,

Since she would shrink with manifest recoil,

Knew she that deeds of hers were made a theme

For measured verse? Why leave the garden flowers

To fix the eye on one poor violet

That on the solitary grove sheds fragrance?

Themes are enough, that court a wide regard,

And prompt a strenuous flight; and yet from all,

My thoughts come back to Linda. Let me spare,

As best I may, her modest privacy,

While under Fancy's not inapt disguise

I give substantial truth, and deal with no

Unreal beings or fantastic facts:

Bear witness to it, Linda!

Now while May

Keeps me a restive prisoner in the house,

For the first time the Spring's unkindness ever

Held me aloof from her companionship,

However roughly from the east her breath

Came as if all the icebergs of Grand Bank

Were giving up their forms in that one gust,—

Now while on orchard-trees the struggling blossoms

Break from the varnished cerements, and in clouds

Of pink and white float round the boughs that hold

Their verdure yet in check,— and while the lawn

Lures from yon hemlock hedge the robin, plump

And copper-breasted, and the west wind brings

Mildness and balm,— let me attempt the task

That also is a pastime.

What though Spring

Brings not of Youth the wonder and the zest;

The hopes, the day-dreams, and the exultations?

The animal life whose overflow and waste

Would far out-measure now our little hoard?

The health that made mere physical existence

An ample joy; that on the ocean beach

Shared with the leaping waves their breezy glee;

That in deep woods, or in forsaken clearings,

Where the charred logs were hid by verdure new,

And the shy wood-thrush lighted; or on hills

Whence counties lay outspread beneath our gaze;

Or by some rock-girt lake where sandy margins

Sloped to the mirrored tints of waving trees,—

Could feel no burden in the grasshopper,

And no unrest in the long summer day?

Would I esteem Youth's fervors fair return

For temperate airs that fan sublimer heights

Than Youth could scale; heights whence the patient vision

May see this life's harsh inequalities,

Its rudimental good and full-blown evil,

Its crimes and earthquakes and insanities,

And all the wrongs and sorrows that perplex us,

Assume, beneath the eternal calm, the order

Which can come only from a Love Divine?

A love that sees the good beyond the evil,

The serial life beyond the eclipsing death,—

That tracks the spirit through eternities,

Backward and forward, and in every germ

Beholds its past, its present, and its future,

At every stage beholds it gravitate

Where it belongs, and thence new-born emerge

Into new life and opportunity,

An outcast never from the assiduous Mercy,

Providing for His teeming universe,

Divinely perfect not because complete,

But because incomplete, advancing ever

Beneath the care Supreme?— heights whence the soul,

Uplifted from all speculative fog,

All darkening doctrine, all confusing fear,

Can see the drifted plants, can scent the odors,

That surely come from that celestial shore

To which we tend; however out of reckoning,

Swept wrong by Error's currents, Passion's storms,

The poor tossed bark may be?

Descend, my thoughts!

Your theme lies lowly as the ground-bird's nest;

Why seek, with wings so feeble and unused,

To soar above the clouds and front the stars?

Descend from your high venture, and to scenes

Of the heart's common history come down!