Thou hast not fallen to decay,
O ever-buoyant Nature!
The streams have kept their wonted way,
The trees their olden stature.
The same sweet-singing waterfall
Through the green valley leaping,
The same calm sunshine over all
In benediction sleeping.
For Nature keeps her olden course
As something fixed and holy;
Her streams, with all their ceaseless force,
Wear their new channels slowly.
While in the rock she cuts one groove
For passage of a river,
Our life slips down the whole remove
From Time to the Forever.
The acorn cone she hides in earth
Long dews and suns must cherish;
And all her things of highest worth
Grow slowly, slowly perish.
Only this human life of ours,
So full of wondrous promise,
Dies quickly as the summer flowers
That evening taketh from us.
And I am changed since when I stood
In this eternal shadow,
And saw beneath me field and wood,
The river and the meadow.
Not all the same I came to thee,
Dear spot by memory haunted;
Unchanged in this, that still to me
Thou art a land enchanted.
