Making that fearful as the touch of pain;
It strikes the sunlit plain,
And harvests flash, or bend with rushing rain;
It is not far when tempests make their moan,
And lightnings leap, and bursts the thunder-stone.
It comes in morning's beam of living light,
And the imperial night
Knows it, and all its company of stars,
And the auroral bars.
Through nature all, the subtile current thrills;
It built in flood and fire the crystal hills;
It molds the flowers,
And all the branchèd forests that abide
Forever on the teeming mountain-side.
It lives where music times the soft, processional hours;
And where on that lone hill of art
Proud Phidias carved in stone his lyric heart;
And where wild battle is, and where
Glad lovers breathe in starry night the quivering air.
THE SONG'S ANSWER
Me mystic? Have your way!
But sing me, if ye may;—
Then shall ye know the power
Of the seed's thought of the flower,
Of the dawn's thought of the day.
THE 'CELLO
When late I heard the trembling 'cello play,
In every face I read sad memories
That from dark, secret chambers where they lay
