one.
The hippopotamus, absurd and bland—
Oh, how God must have laughed when first He saw
These great jests breathe and love and walk about;
And how the heavens must have echoed him...
For greater than His beauty or His wrath
Was God's vast mirth before His back was bent
With Time and all the troubling universe,
Ere He grew dull and weary with creating...
Oh, to have been alive and heard that laugh
Thrilling the stars, convulsing all the earth,
While meteors flashed from out His sparkling eyes,
And even the eternal, placid Night
Forgot to lift reproving fingers, smiled
And joined, indulgent, in the merriment...
And, how they sang, and how the hours flew
When God was young and blithe and whimsical.

IN THE BERKSHIRE HILLS

How can the village dead remain so still...
Surely they tingle with the winey air,
When the skies riot and the sunsets flare
And all the world becomes a flaming hill.
Surely the driest dust must turn and thrill
When these wild breezes sweep out all despair—
And lakes are bluest, pools are starriest where
The streaming heavens overflow and spill.

Oh, were it I that lay like any clod,
Though buried under rock and gnarled tree,
I would arise, and, through the clinging sod,
Go struggling upward, passionate and proud;
Laugh, with the winds and mountains watching me,
And dance in triumph on my crumbling shroud.

VOICES

All day with anxious heart and wondering ear
I listened to the city; heard the ground
Echo with human thunder, and the sound
Go reeling down the streets and disappear.
The headlong hours, in their wild career,
Shouted and sang until the world was drowned
With babel-voices, each one more profound...
All day it surged—but nothing could I hear.

That night the country never seemed so still;
The trees and grasses spoke without a word
To stars that brushed them with their silver wings.
Together with the moon I climbed the hill,
And, in the very heart of Silence, heard
The speech and music of immortal things.

REVELATION

September—and an afternoon
Heavy with languid thoughts and long;
The air breathes faintly, half in swoon,
Like silence trembling after Song.
The mighty calmness seems to draw
My spirit through a painless birth—
And now, with eyes that never saw,
I see the poetry of earth.

That group of old maple-trees brooding in peace by the river,
Happy with sunlight, and an oriole singing among them—
Lo, what a marvel (what rapture for Him who first sung them)
That here, in less space than a carpenter's workshop, the Giver
Has fashioned a casual wonder
Greater than dawn or the thunder.
Here in a dozen of feet He has blended
Music and motion and color and form,
Each in itself a creation so splendid
That, were it the world's one beauty, 'twould warm
And kindle all Life till it ended.

Birds and old maple-trees—
Only to think of these,
Only to dream of them here for an hour
Is to know all the secrets of earth.
For here is the world that God sang into flower
And bloom at its birth—
Here is its magical uplift and power;
Its music and mirth.

Here the sun scarcely wakes;
Like a monarch it takes
Rest on the lordliest branches alone.
Till a glad tremor shakes
Every leaf that is blown—
While a zephyr advancing,
Breathes gently and breaks
The light into dancing
Figures, with glancing
Rhythms and rhymes of their own.

Yes, here in this spot, in this edge of an acre
All of the world is, the heart and the whole of it—
Here is a universe; daily the Maker
Shows here the sweet and extravagant soul of it.
For the arms of the maple have held in their cover
The earth and the sky and the stars, every one—
Not the tenderest twig but has known, like a lover
The silence, the night and the sun.

Not the airiest bird but has sung, all unknowing,
The joy of each minstrel that carols unheard.
And Summer, green fields and a world of things growing,
Are brought to this spot by the breath of a bird.
And there's never a wind but brings road-sides and ranches,
Forests and tales of the far-off and free—
And the rush of the breeze as it sings in the branches
Echoes and answers the rush of the sea...

A group of old maple-trees brooding in peace by the river—
That—and a bird, nothing else... But above and around it,
The spell of the infinite beauty, half-hidden forever,
Lies, like a secret of God's—and here I have found it.
The hymn of the cosmic—the anthem that has for its choir
Stars, rivers and flowers—still rises and sweeps me along;
While the cry of the oriole melts in a sunset of fire
And the heavens, a jubilant chorus, are flushed with the
fires of Song!

AFFIRMATION

As long as vigorous discontent
Goads us from torpid ease, or worse,
I thank the power that sent
Struggle, the savior of the universe.

As long as things are torn and hurled
In this implacable unrest,
I shall embrace the world
With joyful fierceness and undying zest.

I shall grow strong with every hurt;
The scorn, the anger will achieve
Only a glad, alert
Desire to question boldly—and believe.

My eager faith shall keep me set
Against despair or careless hate,
Knowing this smoke and sweat
Is forging something violent—and great!

DOWN-HILL ON A BICYCLE

The rolling earth stops
As I climb to the summit,
Then like a plummet
It suddenly drops...

Down, down I go—
Past rippling