Poems and Prose (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SKYLARK. Blest bird, contrasted with the bard's, How free thy numbers float? No hurly-burly task retards The warblings of thy throat; While he is doomed from day to day And night to night to fight his way Thro' saddening scenes of death in life Amidst the soul-destroying strife For gold, which now usurps the place Of God and all things with man's race. And so, altho' the bard is born Into a world in which his songs Are more than e'er before required To lure the plodding peaceless throngs To objects meet to be desired,? His brow, if crowned, is crowned with thorn. But thou, when morning peepeth thro' Her curtains dew-besprent, Dost soar amidst the gold and blue Of God's fair firmament; And pourest joysomely along The sky the glory of thy song, Till mount and mead and lawn and lea Grow gladsomer because of thee! Nor turnest thou, tho' clouds may come To darken all the welkin, dumb, But singest on thro' shade and shine Like a true poet, which thou nrt: And every bard of human kind, When dark in soul or sick at heart Should ever bravely bear in mind This noble attribute of thine. Delightful singer, thou has taught From thy blue dewy height To me a lasting lesson, fraught With deepness and delight: Is a man a babe that he should fret And fill his life with fierce regret And the bewearied world with noise, Because he cannot get the toys He wants, or rend the veil between The Godhead and this earthly scene ? Tho' clouds obscure they never blot The glory from the gentle sky; And every true and noble heart, Tho' faint, and almost fain to die, May, if it will, enact the part Which triumphs o'er the direst lot. 1872. A PARABLE. The spider, when the foot Of some wayfarer rends its web, the fruit Of rnuny an hour...