SUBSTRATUM.

Hear you r o music in the creaks

Made by the sallow grasshopper,

Who in the hot weeds sharply breaks

The mellow dryness with his cheer?

Or did you by the hearthstones hear

The cricket's kind, shrill strain when frost

Worked mysteries of silver near

Upon the casement's panes, and lost

Without the gate-post seemed a sheeted ghost?

Or through the dank, dim Springtide's night

Green minstrels of the marshlands tune

Their hoarse lyres in the pale twilight,

Hailing the sickle of the moon

From flag-thronged pools that glassed her lune?

Or in the Summer, dry and loud,

The hard cicada whirr aboon

His long lay in a poplar's cloud,

When the thin heat rose wraith-like in a shroud?

The cloud that lids the naked moon,

And smites the myriad leaves with night

Of stormy lashes, livid strewn

With veins of branched and splintered light;

The fruitful glebe with blossoms white,

The thistle's purple plume; the tears

Pearling the matin buds’ delight,

Contain a something, it appears,

‘ Neath their real selves — a poetry that cheers.

Nor scoff at those who on the wold

See fairies whirling in the shine

Of prodigal moons, whose lavish gold

Paves wood-ways, forests wild with vine,

When all the wilderness with wine

Of tipsy dew is dazed; nor say

Our God's restricted to confine

His wonders solely to the day,

That yields the abstract tangible to clay.

Ponder the entrance of the Morn

When from her rubric forehead far

Shines one clean star, and the dead tarn,

The wooded river's red as war:

Where arid splinters of the scar

Lock horns above a blue abyss,

How roses prank each icy bar,

While piled aloft the mountains press,

Fling dawn below from many a hoary tress.

The jutting crags, all stubborn-veined

With iron life, where eaglets scream

In dizzy flocks, and cleave the stained

Mist-rainbows of the mountain stream;

Thus you will drink the thickest cream

Of nature if you do not scan

The bald external; and must deem

A plan existent in a plan —

As life in thrifty trees or soul in man.