Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher! 
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. 
When the fierce northwestern blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep;
Woe and want thou canst outsleep;
Want and woe, which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

BERRYING

’May be true what I had heard,—­
Earth’s a howling wilderness,
Truculent with fraud and force,’
Said I, strolling through the pastures,
And along the river-side. 
Caught among the blackberry vines,
Feeding on the Ethiops sweet,
Pleasant fancies overtook me. 
I said, ’What influence me preferred,
Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?’
The vines replied, ’And didst thou deem
No wisdom from our berries went?’

THE SNOW-STORM

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight:  the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry. 
Out of an unseen quarry
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion.  Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate
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.

WOODNOTES I

1

When the pine tosses its cones
To the song of its waterfall tones,
Who speeds to the woodland walks? 
To birds and trees who talks? 
Caesar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home. 
He goes to the river-side,—­
Not hook nor line hath he;
He stands in the meadows wide,—­
Nor gun nor scythe to see. 
Sure some god his eye enchants: 
What he knows nobody wants. 
In the wood he travels glad,
Without better fortune had,
Melancholy without bad. 
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest: