A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.

1841.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

EARLY SPRING

ONCE more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,

And domes the red-plow'd hills

With loving blue;

The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.

Opens a door in Heaven;

From skies of glass

A Jacob's ladder falls

On greening grass,

And o'er the mountain-walls

Young angels pass.

Before them fleets the shower,

And burst the buds.

And shine the level lands,

And flash the floods;

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The stars are from their hands
Flung thro' the woods,

The woods with living airs
How softly fann'd,

Light airs from where the deep,

All down the sand,

Is breathing in his sleep,

Heard by the land.

O follow, leaping blood,
The season's lure!

O heart, look down and up

Serene, secure,

Warm as the crocus cup,

Like snowdrops, pure!

Past, Future glimpse and fade
Thro' some slight spell,

A gleam from yonder vale,
Some far blue fell,

And sympathies, how frail,
In sound and smell!

Till at thy chuckled note,

Thou twinkling bird, The fairy fancies range,

And, lightly stirr'd, Ring little bells of change From word to word.

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For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,

And thaws the cold, and fills
The flower with dew;

The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.

1883.

Lord Tennyson.

RAIN IN SUMMER

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,

In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,

How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs!

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane

It pours and pours;

And swift and wide,

With a muddy tide,

Like a river down the gutter roars

The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks

At the twisted brooks;

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In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,

Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,

To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land

The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale

The clover-scented gale,

And the vapors that arise

From the well-watered and smoking soil.

For this rest in the furrow after toil

Their large and lustrous eyes.

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Seem to thank the Lord,"

More than man's spoken word.

Near at hand,

From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees

His pastures, and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops

To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.

He counts it as no sin.

That he sees therein

Only his own thrift and gain.

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These, and far more than these,

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The Poet sees!

He can behold

Aquarius old

Walking the fenceless fields of air;
And from each ample fold

Of the clouds about him rolled
Scattering everywhere

The showery rain,

As the farmer scatters his grain.

He can behold

Things manifold

That have not yet been wholly told.—
Have not been wholly sung nor said.
For his thought, that never stops,
Follows the water-drops

Down to the graves of the dead,

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