And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant and mineral say, ‘Not in us;’
And haughtily return us stare for stare. 
For we invade them impiously for gain;
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love. 
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due;
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents
Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve.  Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
And, in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar’s child;
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,
Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy’s purchase with the length of life.

MUSKETAQUID

Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state,
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,
Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
And through my rock-like, solitary wont
Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. 
For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the Spring
Visits the valley;—­break away the clouds,—­
I bathe in the morn’s soft and silvered air,
And loiter willing by yon loitering stream. 
Sparrows far off, and nearer, April’s bird,
Blue-coated,—­flying before from tree to tree,
Courageous sing a delicate overture
To lead the tardy concert of the year. 
Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;
And wide around, the marriage of the plants
Is sweetly solemnized.  Then flows amain
The surge of summer’s beauty; dell and crag,
Hollow and lake, hillside and pine arcade,
Are touched with genius.  Yonder ragged cliff
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.

Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
Here in pine houses built of new-fallen trees,
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell. 
Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road,
Or, it may be, a picture; to these men,