Spirituality

Though flowers have perished at the touch
Of Frost, the early comer,
I hail the season loved so much,
The good St. Martin’s summer.

O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn,
And thin moon curving o’er it!
The old year’s darling, latest born,
More loved than all before it!

How flamed the sunrise through the pines!
How stretched the birchen shadows,
Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines
The westward sloping meadows!

The sweet day, opening as a flower
Unfolds its petals tender,
Renews for us at noontide’s hour
The summer’s tempered splendor.

The birds are hushed; alone the wind,
That through the woodland searches,
The red-oak’s lingering leaves can find,
And yellow plumes of larches.

But still the balsam-breathing pine<...

Now as even's warning bell
Rings the day's departing knell,
Leaving me from labour free,
Solitude, I'll walk with thee:
Whether 'side the woods we rove,
Or sweep beneath the willow grove;
Whether sauntering we proceed
Cross the green, or down the mead;
Whether, sitting down, we look
On the bubbles of the brook;
Whether, curious, waste an hour,
Pausing o'er each tasty flower;
Or, expounding nature's spells,
From the sand pick out the shells;
Or, while lingering by the streams,
Where more sweet the music seems,
Listen to the soft'ning swells
Of some distant chiming bells
Mellowing sweetly on the breeze,
Rising, falling by degrees,
Dying now, then wak'd again
In full many a 'witching strain,
Sounding, as the gale flits by,
Flats...