Life

SPRING'S breath is in the air: the dreaming Earth,
Long wrapped in deep repose,
Beneath the snows,
Waiting the season’s birth,
Stirs in her sleep;
Still her warm heart doth keep
Sweet memories of love’s departed days;
Yet does her bosom thrill
Beneath its mantle chill,
Owning the magic of her lover’s gaze;
For now her lord, the Sun,
Afar his course hath run,
And comes to wake her with his kindling rays.

Ah ! ’t is no idle word,
In song and saga heard,
That tells the tale of love’s awakening power.
The Northmen’s myth sublime,
The poet’s tender rhyme,
Breathe kindred truths, that fit the passing hour.

Poet or Viking, heart of flesh or flame !
That heart’s own history
Revealed life’s mystery ;
To Nature’s child the nature secret came.
And who shall say
That in the heart of clay,
Throbbing beneath our feet, no spirit dwells ?
Or that yon star,
Pulsating from afar,
Naught save a blind mechanic force impels ?

O ye who deeply con great Nature’s lore,
(Yet backward read,)
Do ye not miss, indeed,
The mightiest truth in all that mighty store ?
Ye deftly read that hieroglyphic page,
And downward trace
The footsteps of the race,
Until ye find the glory of our age,
Its thought sublime,
Lost in primeval slime.

Ye hold the substance, but the vital flame
Eludes your grasp;
Spirit ye cannot clasp:
O brave truth-seekers, can ye therefore claim
That love and trust
Are accidents of dust ?

Though ye may scan
The unfolding powers of man,
And mark the height to which his thought may soar,
How can ye tell
What inner life may dwell
Even in the slime that paves the ocean floor ?

“God’s spirit moved above the lifeless waves,
And life was born : ”
’T is thus creation’s morn
Has shone on us across the centuries’ graves.
To-day the lamp of ancient faith burns dim ;
New lights arise,
And flood the eastern skies,
And echoes far great Nature’s primal hymn.

Life is, and was, and shall be, ever still,
The regnant soul ;
While suns and planets roll,
Shall bend obedient matter to its will;
Day after day
Shall veil itself in clay,
And ever thus its spiral track ascend :
Each shell downcast
More perfect than the last,
Each step more potent for the crowning end.

’T is thus I fain would read the ancient writ
Of ages gone,
Graven on crumbling stone ;
At the great mother’s feet, I thus would sit,
And list the story of her morning time ;
And as I heard,
Each retrospective word
Should inly glow with prophecies sublime ;
Life is, and was, and shall be, evermore.
Oh, deep and vast
The records of the past,
But measureless the promises in store.