Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things that cannot be:
Today, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling;
Can center both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
When days of Beauty deck the earth
Or stormy nights descend
How well my spirit knows the path
On which it ought to wend
It seeks the consecrated spot
Beloved in childhood’s years
The space between is all forgot
Its suffering and its tears.
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
All day I’ve toiled but not with pain
In learning’s golden mine
And now at eventide again
The moonbeams softly shine
There is no snow upon the ground
No frost on wind or wave
The south wind blew with gentlest sound
And broke their icy grave
Tis sweet to wander here at night
To watch the winter die
With heart as summer sunshine light
And warm as summer’s sky
O may I never lose the peace
That lulls me gently now
Though time should change my youthful face
And years should shade my brow
True to myself and true to all
May I be healthful still
And turn away from passion’s call
And curb my own wild will
I know not how it falls on me,
This summer evening hushed and lone;
Yet the faint wind comes soothingly
With something of an olden tone.
Forgive me if I’ve shunned so long
Your gentle greeting, earth and air!
But sorrow withers e’en the strong,
And who can fight against despair?