Our gracious Mother Nature; she hath a word for each--
Today or else tomorrow she'll name you in her speech;
Say not she smiles too lightly--there are weepers every day,
But go you to the meadows when trouble's once away--
All the shining and the song
Shall nothing seem to wrong;
O, the world is good, and may its years be long!
We know the Garden's story--sorrow is old as man;
Is sorrow old as the world? who knows which first began?
Whoever turned the chorus till the chief singer came,
Through all his echoing ages the key has been the same,
For Adam in his time,
And for each in passion's prime,
The joy-bells and the dirges ring in interchime.
The hearts of men are rivers, that chafe in ordered grooves,
With now a song of sighing and now a song of loves;
O Nature, Mother Nature! she hath borne us on her breast,
Till her own great heart is beating in flow with our unrest
Many a time the sky
Hath wept its blue eyes dry
Ere ever wept beneath it, you and I.
She has winds that cry of conflict to the soul that strives;
She has deserts bitter-hearted with the grief of wasted lives;
She has lonely rocks and moors, and ever sighing seas,
And someday you shall hearken to your own life in these.
But it's Ho all the day,
When trouble's once away,
And again she'll pipe for us, and we'll be gay.
She has mountains weird and kingly, with the clouds upon their head;
She has fearful-thunder places, where the storms are bred;
But strength and safety gird her--sea-depths and mountain-bars,
And peace is where eternity dwells among the stars.
And it's Hush, all the night,
And the moongleam lieth white,
Like the pale hand of peace, shutting the lids from sight.
All to keep the life in us, the life that goeth fast,
Ever she turns and turns it, but it weareth out at last;
Sorely and oft she sigheth, to put the old away;--
So to us shall tears be given, when we have had our day.
Then for us the earth will keep
A silence sweet and deep,
And again she'll sing for us, and we shall _sleep_.
