… the earth When all the ecstasy of myriad birth Afflicts her with a rapturous shuddering,
and celebrating escape from the thraldom of books, it demands of the soul:
Spirit, what wilt thou dare, Just to be one with earth and air? To read the writing on the river bed, And trace God’s mystical mosaic overhead?
O incommunicable speech! For he who reads a book may preach A hundred sermons from its foolish rote And rhyme reiterant on one dull note. But he who spends an hour within the wood Hath fed on fairy food; And who hath eaten of the forest fruit Is ever mute. Nothing may he reveal. Nature hath set her seal Of honor on anointed lips; And one who daring dips His cup within her potent brew Hath drunk of silence too. What doth the robin say, And what the martial jay? Who’ll swear the bluebird’s lilt is all of love, Or who translate the desolation of the dove? For even in the common speech Of feathered fellows, each to each, Abideth still the primal mystery, The brooding past, the germ of life to be; And one poor weed, upspringing to the sun, Breeds all creation’s wonder, new begun.
“Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain,” written in fine resonant pentameter, and building up stanza by stanza to the supreme climax of the dawn, is, as noted above, one of the finest achievements of Miss Brown’s volume, but one that will least bear the severing of its passages from their place in the growing whole. It is full of notable phrases, as that in the apostrophe,—
O changeless guardians! O ye wizard firs!
What breath may move ye, or what breeze invite To odorous hot lendings of the heart?—
wherein the very pungency of the pine is infused into the words. But more adaptable to quotation in its compactness is the lyric entitled “Candlemas,” captivating in form and spontaneity, though no more felicitous in fancy or rhythm than many other of her nature poems:
O hearken, all ye little weeds That lie beneath the snow, (So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!) The sun hath risen for royal deeds, A valiant wind the vanguard leads; Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds Before ye rise and blow.
O furry living things, adream On winter’s drowsy breast, (How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!) Arise and follow where a gleam Of wizard gold unbinds the stream, And all the woodland windings seem With sweet expectance blest.