MY TRIUMPH The autumn time has come; The low sun fainter shines. The aster-flower is failing, And present gratitude That in the paths untrod, O living friends that love me! I leave to you my name. Hide it from idle praises, Save it from evil phrases: Why, when dear lips that spake it Are dumb, should strangers wake it? Let the thick curtain fall; I better know than all Not by the page word-painted Sweeter than any sung My songs that found no tongue; Nobler than any fact My wish that failed of act. Others shall sing the song, What matter, I or they? Hail to the coming singers! The airs of heaven blow o'er me; A glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be, Pure, generous, brave, and free. A dream of man and woman Solving the riddle old, Shaping the Age of Gold! The love of God and neighbor; An equal-handed labor; Ring, bells in unreared steeples, Parcel and part of all, I feel the earth move sunward, MY PLAYMATE The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, The blossoms drifted at our feet, For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home, And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, She left us in the bloom of May: The constant years told o'er Their seasons with as sweet May morns, But she came back no more. I walk, with noiseless feet, the round Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring She lives where all the golden year There haply with her jewelled hands The wild grapes wait us by the brook, And still the May-day flowers make sweet The lilies blossom in the pond, The bird builds in the tree, What cares she that the orioles build For other eyes than ours, That other hands with nuts are filled, O playmate in the golden time! The winds so sweet with birch and fern A sweeter memory blow; And there in spring the veeries sing The song of long ago. And still the pines of Ramoth wood SNOW-BOUND A WINTER IDYL "As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common VVood fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of VVood doth the same."— COR. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v. "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, EMERSON, The Snow-Storm |