class="c10">It sentinels the moss-grown homestead,
And waits the men of a coming day.

Its curving lines that fill the sight,
Like mellow meteor's path of light,
Or orbèd spring of walls of azure,
My spirit greet from the infinite.

en plow and sow while moves the sun
Away, away from work begun;
Ofttimes they've heard "Seedtime and harvest
Are sure"—the word of the Sovereign One.

We link our deeds with law supreme,
In field and flood, in wood and stream;
We test Omnipotence by labor,
And reap rewards of no idle dream.

Obedience is the astringent wine
That's quaffed by strenuous souls and fine,
Of cloudy doubt the heavenly solvent,
The Christ's elixir of life divine.

oubt flies before the truth that's quired
When earth in living green 's attired,
As ghosts before the daystar's rising,—
The grass is ever God finger-spired.

When life is low my awe-stirred soul
No vision has of nature's whole;
It would unsheathe a weapon naked
And cut the bands of divine control.

The Nazarene knows no decrease,—
He shed His beams on Rome and Greece!
O radiant is His word: Consider
The springing grass, and have rest and peace!

he bird of needle beak, and breast
Of orange flame, doth weave its nest
At tip of branch, a cradle swinging
To all the airs of the south and west.

Who schooled thy needle to begin
Its forth and back and out and in,
Till plaited cot, a gourd-like pendant,
Shall temper winds to thy first of kin?

Thy sun-bright mate, his joy to prove,
Flutes sweet his ardors from above.
O golden robin, skyey-nested,

ure lily, open on the breast
Of toiling waters' much unrest,
Thy simple soul mounts up in worship
Like ecstasy of a spirit blest!

Thy wealth of ivory and gold,
All that thou hast, thou dost unfold!
Fixed in the unseen thy life breathes upward
A heavenly essence from out earth's mould.

Now comes the chill and dusk of night,—
Folds up thy precious gold and white!
Thy casket sinks within veiled bosom,
To ope the richer in morrow's light.

evolving without rest and goal
The way of life of budding soul,
From seed to leaf and stalk, I see it,
From leaf to bloom and from bloom to whole.

About the Daystar, God-indwelt,
It turneth to His influence felt,
Till, dusk beam-smitten into daylight,
It in the palpitant heavens doth melt.

Lift, lift, ye gates of endless noons,
That entrance yield on God's own boons
Of liberty as law in fruitage,
And timeless months of transcendent Junes!

June has lit her splendid lamp
In the broad meadow lush and damp,
Where loves the brook in loops to loiter,
And tufted vernal to pitch its camp!

Last night she veiled the starlit sky,
And walked beside the brook so shy;
She took from out her beating bosom
A lighted orchis—and passed on high.

At dawn July came o'er the hills—
O light of eye and deep heart-thrills,
As she beheld the glowing orchis
Whose splendor now all the meadow fills!

quiet breath distils in calm,
And fills the fields with honeyed balm;
It cools the rose's cheek, and rolleth
In drops of dew on the poppy's palm—

Each crystal globe filled full of fire,
And flashing like a color pyre,
All heavened beneath the eye of morning,
To sate the hunger of day's desire.

O Breath divine, that form and hue,
And ecstasy of light and blue,
Gave to Orion and the Pleiads,
Thou hast begotten the orbs of dew.

ar-off and veiled it seems to me,
The face of yester dreamy sea,
That breathed so soft its shining waters
Pungent with odors of rosemary.

No sculptured arabesque to-day,
But unhewn strength in mighty play,
That heaves the ship on bursting billow
And smites the cliff in its ancient way!

Beneath its silken vestments beat
A lion heart of jungle heat;
Its couchant soul delights in battle
To fell the rock and to whelm the fleet.

ast promise is the sea, and vast
Its pain. Its secret is held fast,—
Now hope's wide open eye and sunny,
And now a weeping and wailing past.

(I have a grievance unredrest
That stings my heart and rends my breast,—
Perhaps it gathers in its bosom
The sorrows wild of the world's opprest?)

Deformity or pain unstrings
The music of the soul of things,—
Ah, suns burn bright in eyes of panther,
And lightnings leap in the eagle's wings!