How sweet it is to read fair Nature o'er
Reclining thus upon her gentle breast,
Like a young child that in her mother's face
Traceth the motions of deep tenderness,
Listing the murmurs of strange melodies
That wander ever round her fresh and clear,
Whence the sweet singers of our earth have caught
Rapt harmonies and echoed them for aye!
What study is like Nature's lumined page,
So glorious with perfect excellence,
That like the flowing of a mighty wind
It fills the crevices and deeps of soul!
No upper chamber and no midnight oil
For me, to throw dim light upon the scroll,
Whose feeble pedantry dulls down the soul
From high imaginings to senseless words;
But for my lamp I'll have the summer sun
Set in the brightness of the firmament;
My chamber shall be canopied by heaven,
Gemmed by the glory of the fixed stars,
And round it floating evermore the breath
Of nascent flowers, and fragrant greenery:
And for my books, all lovely things in Earth
And air, and heaven, all seasons and all times.
The Spring shall bring me all the thoughts of youth,
Its budding hopes and buoyant happiness;
'Twill sing me lays of tenderness and love,
That are the first sweet flowers of childhood's days,
And win me back to purity and joy
With the untainted current of its breath.
Summer will be the volume of the heart,
Expanded with the strength of growing life,
Swelling with full brimm'd feeling evermore,
And power and passion longing to be forth;
'Twill tell of life quick with the seed of thought,
Rising incessant into bud and bloom,
And shedding hope and promise over Time,
Like the sweet breath that tells the mariner
Of fragrant shores fast rising in his course.
Then Autumn, glorious with accomplishment,
The harvest and the fruitage of the past,
Stored with the gladness and the gain of life,
Or sadden'd by its unproductiveness;
And Winter like a prophecy would come
To warn me of the end that draweth nigh.
Each falling leaf that flutter'd from its bough,
Pale with the sereness of keen-biting frosts,
Would teach me that the ties of earth must loose,
One after one, the interests and joys
That made life's excellent completeness up,
Until the trunk, stripped of its verdant dress,
Stand in the naked dreadfulness of death.
Thus will my soul learn wisdom true and deep,
Not in the school of petty prejudice,
Where truth is measured out by interest,
And duty shrinks into expediency;
Not in the volumes of pedantic fools,
Who bind up knowledge, mummy-like, with terms,
That sunder'd, the enclosure turns to dust;
Not in the false philosophy of man,
Who speculates on causes and effects,
Yet thrusts his hand into the scorching flame,
And wonders that it singeth in the act--
But from her teaching who can never err,
The Pure, the Beautiful, the Mother mind,
That in the fulness of her unsearch'd soul,
Shrineth all knowledge and all loveliness!