DEDICATION.
Silent and serene,
The plastic soul emancipates her kind.
She leaves the generations to their fate,
Uncompromised by grief. She cannot weep:
She sheds no tears for us,—our mother, Nature!
She is ne'er rude nor vexed, not rough or careless;
Out of temper ne'er, patient as sweet, though winds
In winter brush her leaves away, and time
To human senses breathes through frost.
My friend!
Learn, from the joy of Nature, thus to be:
Not only all resigned to thy worst fears,
But, like herself, superior to them all!
Nor merely superficial in thy smiles;
And through the inmost fibres of thy heart
May goodness flow, and fix in that
The ever-lapsing tides, that lesser depths
Deprive of half their salience. Be, throughout,
True as the inmost life that moves the world,
And in demeanor show a firm content,
Annihilating change.
