er feet in place of ours,
And in the summers yet to come,
Make glad another Feast of Flowers!
Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep,
The pleasant pictures thou hast seen;
Forget thy lovers not, but keep
Our memory like thy laurels green.
ISLES of SHOALS, 7th mo., 1870.
JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC.
O dwellers in the stately towns,
What come ye out to see?
This common earth, this common sky,
This water flowing free?
As gayly as these kalmia flowers
Your door-yard blossoms spring;
As sweetly as these wild-wood birds
Your caged minstrels sing.
You find but common bloom and green,
The rippling river's rune,
The beauty which is everywhere
Beneath the skies of June;
The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn plumes
Of old pine-forest kings,
Beneath whose century-woven shade
Deer Island's mistress sings.
And here are pictured Artichoke,
And Curson's bowery mill;
And Pleasant Valley smiles between
The river and the hill.
You know full well these banks of bloom,
The upland's wavy line,
And how the sunshine tips with fire
The needles of the pine.
Yet, like some old remembered psalm,
Or sweet, familiar face,
Not less because of commonness
You love the day and place.
And not in vain in this soft air
Shall hard-strung nerves relax,
Not all in vain the o'erworn brain
Forego its daily tax.
The lust of power, the greed of gain
Have all the year their own;
The haunting demons well may let
Our one bright day alone.
Unheeded let the newsboy call,
Aside the ledger lay
The world will keep its treadmill step
Though we fall out to-day.
The truants of life's weary school,
Without excuse from thrift
We change for once the gains of toil
For God's unpurchased gift.
From ceiled rooms, from silent books,
From crowded car and town,
Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap,
We lay our tired heads down.
Cool, summer wind, our heated brows;
Blue river, through the green
Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes
Which all too much have seen.
For us these pleasant woodland ways
Are thronged with memories old,
Have felt the grasp of friendly hands
And heard love's story told.
A sacred presence overbroods
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