LIFE IN NATURE.

Life grows not more nor less; it is but force

And only changes;

Expended here, it takes another course,

And ever ranges

Throughout this circling universe of ours,

Now quickening man, now in his grave-grown flowers.

Yet dwells life not alone in man and beast

And budding flowers.

It lurks in all things, from the very least

Gleam in dark bowers

Of the great sun, through stones, and sea, and air,

Up to ourselves, in Nature everywhere.

Life differs from the soul. This is beyond

The realms of science;

God and mankind it joins in closest bond,

And bids defiance

To Death and Change. By faith alone confessed,

It dwells within our bodies as a guest.

The germ of life sleeps in the aged hills

And stately rivets,

And wakes into the life our hearts that thrills

And in leaves quivers.

The universe is one great reservoir

From which man draws of thinking life his store.

And, therefore, is it that the weary brain,

That seeks communion

With Nature in her haunts, finds strength again

In that close union:

She is our mother and the mind distressed

Drinks a new draught of life at her loved breast.