Lo! the south answers to the north;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;
A greater spirit bids thee forth

Than the gay dreams which thee detain.
Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades!
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrives the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound.
Take the bounty of thy birth,
Taste the lordship of the earth.'

I heard, and I obeyed,-
Assured that he who made the claim,
Well known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.

Ere yet the summoning voice was still,
I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.

From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed
Like ample banner flung abroad
To all the dwellers in the plains
Round about, a hundred miles,

With salutation to the sea, and to the bordering isles.

In his own loom's garment dressed,

By his proper bounty blessed,
Fast abides this constant giver,
Pouring many a cheerful river;
To far eyes, an aerial isle

Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The people's pride, the country's core,
Inspirer, prophet evermore;
Pillar which God aloft had set
So that men might it not forget;
It should be their life's ornament,
And mix itself with each event;
Gauge and calendar and dial,
Weatherglass and chemic phial,
Garden of berries, perch of birds,
Pasture of pool-haunting herds,
Graced by each change of sum untold,
Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.
The Titan heeds his sky-affairs,
Rich rents and wide alliance shares ;
Mysteries of colour daily laid

By morn and eve in light and shade;
And sweet varieties of chance,
And the mystic seasons' dance;
And thief-like step of liberal hours
Thawing snow-drift into flowers.
O, wondrous craft of plant and stone
By eldest science wrought and shown!
'Happy,' I said, 'whose home is here!
Fair fortunes to the mountaineer !
Boon Nature to his poorest shed
Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.
Intent, I searched the region round,
And in low hut the dweller found :-
Woe is me for my hope's downfall !
Is yonder squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead?
Time out of mind, this forge of ores;
Quarry of spars in mountain pores;
Old cradle, hunting-ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear and deer;
Well-built abode of many a race;
Tower of observance searching space;

Factory of river and of rain;

Link in the alps' globe-girding chain;
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the Eternal standeth well,
And what obedient Nature can ;-
Is this colossal talisman

Kindly to plant, and blood, and kind,
But speechless to the master's mind?
I thought to find the patriots

In whom the stock of freedom roots:
To myself I oft recount

Tales of many a famous mount,—
Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells;
Bards, Roys, Scanderbegs, and Tells.
Here Nature shall condense her powers,
Her music, and her meteors,

And lifting man to the blue deep

Where stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor, lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight:
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies,
Rear purer wits, inventive eyes,-
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see;
And by the moral of his place
Hint summits of heroic grace;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To fight pollution of the mind;

In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong,
The insanity of towns to stem
With simpleness for stratagem.
But if the brave old mould is broke,
And end in churls the mountain folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke,
Sink, O mountain, in the swamp!
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lamp!
Perish like leaves, the highland breed:
No sire survive, no son succeed!
Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men.
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland people,
Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,
Strong as giant, slow as child.
Sweat and season are their arts,
Their talismans are ploughs and carts;

And well the youngest can command
Honey from the frozen land;
With cloverheads the swamp adorn,
Change the running sand to corn;
For wolf and fox bring lowing herds,
And for cold mosses, cream and curds:
Weave wood to canisters and mats;
Drain sweet maple juice in vats.
No bird is safe that cuts the air
From their rifle or their snare;
No fish, in river or in lake,

But their long hands it thence will take;
Whilst the country's flinty face,

Like wax, their fashioning skill betrays,
To fill the hollows, sink the hills,

Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills,

And fit the bleak and howling waste
For homes of virtue, sense, and taste.
The World-soul knows his own affair,
Forelooking, when he would prepare

Now in sordid weeds they sleep,

In dulness now their secret keep;
Yet, will learn our ancient speech,

you

These the masters who can teach.
Fourscore or a hundred words

All their vocal muse affords ;

But they turn them in a fashion

Past clerks' or statesmen's art or passion.
I can spare the college bell,
And the learned lecture, well;
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For what hardy Saxon root
Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground, and never soars,
While Jake retorts, and Reuben roars:
Scoff of yeoman strong and stark,
Goes like bullet to its mark;
While the solid curse and jeer
Never baulk the waiting ear.

On the summit as I stood,
O'er the floor of plain and flood
Seemed to me, the towering hill
Was not altogether still,
But a quiet sense conveyed;
If I err not, thus it said :-

'Many feet in summer seek,
Oft, my far-appearing peak;
In the dreaded winter time,
None save dappling shadows climb
Under clouds, my lonely head,

Old as the sun, old almost as the shade.
And comest thou

To see strange forests and new snow,
And tread uplifted land?

And leavest thou thy lowland race,

Here amid clouds to stand?

And wouldst be my companion
Where I gaze, and still shall gaze,

Through hoarding nights and spending days,
When forests fall, and man is gone,

Over tribes and over times,

At the burning Lyre,

Nearing me,

With its stars of northern fire,
In many a thousand years?

'Ah! welcome, if thou bring

My secret in thy brain;

To mountain-top may Muse's wing With good allowance strain.

Gentle pilgrim, if thou know
The gamut old of Pan,
And how the hills began,
The frank blessings of the hill
Fall on thee, as fall they will.

'Let him heed who can and will;
Enchantment fixed me here
To stand the hurts of time, until
In mightier chant I disappear.
If thou trowest

How the chemic eddies play,
Pole to pole, and what they say;
And that these gray crags

Not on crags are hung,

But beads are of a rosary

On prayer and music strung;

And, credulous, through the granite seeming,

Seest the smile of Reason beaming ;

Can thy style-discerning eye

The hidden-working Builder spy,

Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din,

With hammer soft as snowflake's flight ;--
Knowest thou this?

O pilgrim, wandering not amiss!
Already my rocks lie light,
And soon my cone will spin.

'For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune;

Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,
The sun obeys them, and the moon.
Orb and atom forth they prance,
When they hear from far the rune;
None so backward in the troop,
When the music and the dance
Reach his place and circumstance,
But knows the sun-creating sound,
And, though a pyramid, will bound.
'Monadnock is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among;
But well I know, no mountain can,
Zion or Meru, measure with man.
For it is on zodiacs writ,
Adamant is soft to wit:

And when the greater comes again
With my secret in his brain,

I shall pass, as glides my shadow
Daily over hill and meadow.

'Through all time, in light, in gloom,
Well I hear the approaching feet
On the flinty pathway beat

Of him that cometh, and shall come;
Of him who shall as lightly bear
My daily load of woods and streams,
As doth this round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams;
Whose timbers, as they silent float,
Alps and Caucasus uprear,

And the long Alleganies here,
And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all their history.

'Every morn I lift my head,

See New England underspread,

South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,
From Katskill east to the sea-bound.
Anchored fast for many an age,

I await the bard and sage,

Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, Shall string Monadnock like a bead.

Comes that cheerful troubadour,
This mound shall throb his face before,
As when, with inward fires and pain,
It rose a bubble from the plain."
When he cometh, I shall shed,
From this wellspring in my head,
Fountain-drop of spicier worth
Than all vintage of the earth.
There's fruit upon my barren soil
Costlier far than wine or oil.
There's a berry blue and gold,-
Autumn-ripe, its juices hold
Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancour, Athens' art,
Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight.
I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat,
Bread to eat, and juice to drain,
So the coinage of his brain

Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars.
He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the Dark,
Paints up hither the spruce clerk
From South Cove and City Wharf.
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath,-
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow;
Open the daunting map beneath,
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His city-tops a glimmering haze.

I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding;
"See there the grim gray rounding
Of the bullet of the earth
Whereon ye sail,

Tumbling steep

In the uncontinented deep."

He looks on that, and he turns pale.
'Tis even so, this treacherous kite,
Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,
Thoughtless of its anxious freight,
Plunges eyeless on for ever;
And he, poor parasite,
Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,
Who is the captain he knows not,
Port or pilot trows not,
Risk or ruin he must share.

I scowl on him with my cloud,
With my north-wind chill his blood;

I lame him, clattering down the rocks;
And to live he is in fear.

Then, at last, I let him down
Once more into his dapper town,

To chatter, frightened, to his clan,
And forget me if he can.'

As in the old poetic fame

The gods are blind and lame,

And the simular despite

Betrays the more abounding might,

So call not waste that barren cone

Above the floral zone,

Where forests starve:

It is pure use ;-

What sheaves like those which here we glean and

bind

Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse?

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,

And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,

They poured the sea, and baked the layers
Of granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,-
Where tarries he the while?

The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide for ever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,

I weary of my robe of snow,

My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is suinmer's pomp,
Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,

My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judæan manger,
And one by Avon stream,

One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o'er kings to rule ;-
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;

Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,

The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

XENOPHANES.

By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave
One scent to hyson and to wall-flower,
One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,
One aspect to the desert and the lake.

It was her stern necessity: all things

Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower,
Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character
Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
And are but one. Beheld far off, they part
As God and devil; bring them to the mind,
They dull its edge with their monotony.
To know one element, explore another,
And in the second reappears the first.
The specious panorama of a year
But multiplies the image of a day,-
A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame;
And universal Nature, through her vast
And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet,
Repeats one note.

MUSKETAQUID.

BECAUSE I was content with these poor fields,
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state,
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,
Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
And through my rock-like, solitary wont
Shot million rays of thought and tenderness.
For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the
spring

Visits the valley ;-break away the clouds,-
I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air,
And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.
Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird,
Blue-coated,-flying before from tree to tree,
Courageous, sing a delicate overture
To lead the tardy concert of the year.
Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;
And wide around, the marriage of the plants
Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain
The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag,
Hollow and lake, hillside, and pine arcade,
Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.
Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
Here in pine houses built of new-fallen trees,
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell.
Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road,
Or, it may be, a picture; to these men,
The landscape is an armoury of powers,
Which, one by one, they know to draw and use.
They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work;
They prove the virtues of each bed of rock,
And, like the chemist mid his loaded jars,
Draw from each stratum its adapted use

To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal. They turn the frost upon their chemic heap,