Feeding the clods your idlesse drains,
  You make more green six feet of soil;
His fruitful word, like suns and rains,
Partakes the seasons’ bounteous pains,
  And toils to lighten human toil.

Your lands, with force or cunning got,
  Shrink to the measure of the grave;
But Death himself abridges not
The tenures of almighty thought,
  The titles of the wise and brave.

TO A PINE-TREE

Far up on Katahdin thou towerest,
  Purple-blue with the distance and vast;
Like a cloud o’er the lowlands thou lowerest,
  That hangs poised on a lull in the blast,
    To its fall leaning awful.

In the storm, like a prophet o’er-maddened,
  Thou singest and tossest thy branches;
Thy heart with the terror is gladdened,
  Thou forebodest the dread avalanches,
    When whole mountains swoop valeward.

In the calm thou o’erstretchest the valleys
  With thine arms, as if blessings imploring,
Like an old king led forth from his palace,
  When his people to battle are pouring
    From the city beneath him.

To the lumberer asleep ’neath thy glooming
  Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion,
Till he longs to be swung mid their booming
  In the tents of the Arabs of ocean,
    Whose finned isles are their cattle.

For the gale snatches thee for his lyre,
  With mad hand crashing melody frantic,
While he pours forth his mighty desire
  To leap down on the eager Atlantic,
    Whose arms stretch to his playmate.

The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches,
  Swooping thence on the continent under;
Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches,
  There awaiteth his leap the fierce thunder,
    Growling low with impatience.

Spite of winter, thou keep’st thy green glory,
  Lusty father of Titans past number! 
The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary,
  Nestling close to thy branches in slumber,
    And thee mantling with silence.

Thou alone know’st the splendor of winter,
  Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices,
Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter,
  And then plunge down the muffled abysses
    In the quiet of midnight.

Thou alone know’st the glory of summer
  Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest,
On thy subjects that send a proud murmur
  Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest
    From thy bleak throne to heaven.

SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES

O wandering dim on the extremest edge
  Of God’s bright providence, whose spirits sigh
Drearily in you, like the winter sedge
  That shivers o’er the dead pool stiff and dry,
  A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind roars by
    From the clear North of Duty,—­
Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace
That here was once a shrine and holy place
    Of the supernal Beauty,
  A child’s play-altar reared of stones and moss,
  With wilted flowers for offering laid across,
Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace.