POEMS OF OCCASION
Revisit now those glades
The stately mantled shades
Whose lips so wear the inexorable spell?
Saying, with heads sunk low,
All that we sought, we know,—
We know, but not to mortal ears may tell:
No answer unto man's desire
Shall thus be made, to quench his eager fire.
Under these orchard trees
Still pure and fresh the breeze
As where the plane-tree whispered to the elm;[1]
The thrush and robin bring
A new-world offering
Of song,—nor are we banished from the realm
Of thought that as the wind is pure,
And converse deep, and memories that endure.
Some honey dropped as well,
Some dew of hydromel
From wilding meadow-bees, upon the lips
Of poet and sage who found,
Here on our own dear ground,
Light as of old; who let no dull eclipse
Obscure this modern sky, where first
Through perilous clouds the dawn of freedom burst.
Within this leafy haunt
Their service ministrant
Upheld the nobler freedom of the soul.
How was it hither came
The message and the flame
Anew? Make answer from thine aureole,
O mother Nature, thou who best
Man's heart in all thy ways interpretest!
- ↑ Aristophanes, Nubes, 995.
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