This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

Now whispered and revealed

To wood and field.

A DAY OF SUNSHINE.

O GIFT of God! O perfect day:

Wereon shall no man work, but play;
Whereon it is enough for me,

Not to be doing, but to be!

Through every fibre of my brain,

Through every nerve, through every vein,

I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.

And over me unrolls on high

The splendid scenery of the sky,

Where through a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon,

Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts

Its craggy summits white with drifts.

Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!

Blow, winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!

O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!

O heart of man! canst thou not be

Blithe as the air is, and as free?

1860.

SOMETHING LEFT UNDONE.

LABOR with what zeal we will, Something still remains undone, Something uncompleted still

Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,

At the threshold, near the gates,

With its menace or its prayer,

Like a mendicant it waits;

Waits, and will not go away;

Waits, and will not be gainsaid;

By the cares of yesterday

Each to-day is heavier made;

Till at length the burden seems

Greater than our strength can bear, Heavy as the weight of dreams,

Pressing on us everywhere.

And we stand from day to day,
Like the dwarfs of times gone by,
Who, as Northern legends say,

On their shoulders held the sky.