With hope that knows itself in vain;
     Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud;
     Now, cooing like a woodland dove;
     Now, up again in roar and wrath
     High soaring and wide sweeping; now,
     With sudden fury dashing down
     Full-force on the awaiting woods.

     Long waited there, for aspens frail
     That tinkle with a silver bell,
     To warn the Zephyr of their love,
     When danger is at hand, and wake
     The neighbouring boughs, surrendering all
     Their prophet harmony of leaves,
     Had caught his earliest windward thought,
     And told it trembling; naked birk
     Down showering her dishevelled hair,
     And like a beauty yielding up
     Her fate to all the elements,
     Had swayed in answer; hazels close,
     Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts,
     And briared brakes that line the dells
     With shaggy beetling brows, had sung
     Shrill music, while the tattered flaws
     Tore over them, and now the whole
     Tumultuous concords, seized at once
     With savage inspiration,—­pine,
     And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,
     And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave
     And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,
     And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,
     And bend their stems, and bow their heads,
     And grind, and groan, and lion-like
     Roar to the echo-peopled hills
     And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry
     With harsh delight, and cave-like call
     With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill
     With mighty melodies, sublime,
     From clumps of column’d pines that wave
     A lofty anthem to the sky,
     Fit music for a prophet’s soul —
     And like an ocean gathering power,
     And murmuring deep, while down below
     Reigns calm profound;—­not trembling now
     The aspens, but like freshening waves
     That fall upon a shingly beach; —
     And round the oak a solemn roll
     Of organ harmony ascends,
     And in the upper foliage sounds

     A symphony of distant seas. 
     The voice of nature is abroad
     This night; she fills the air with balm;
     Her mystery is o’er the land;
     And who that hears her now and yields
     His being to her yearning tones,
     And seats his soul upon her wings,
     And broadens o’er the wind-swept world
     With her, will gather in the flight
     More knowledge of her secret, more
     Delight in her beneficence,
     Than hours of musing, or the lore
     That lives with men could ever give! 
     Nor will it pass away when morn
     Shall look upon the lulling leaves,
     And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,
     Dreams o’er the paths of peaceful shade; —
     For every elemental power
     Is kindred to our hearts, and once
     Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced,
     Once taken to the unfettered sense,
     Once claspt into the naked life,
     The union is eternal.