THE INWARD MORNING
Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
Which outward nature wears,
And in its fashion’s hourly change
It all things else repairs.
In vain I look for change abroad,
And can no difference find,
Till some new ray of peace uncalled
Illumes my inmost mind.
What is it gilds the trees and clouds,
And paints the heavens so gay,
But yonder fast abiding light
With its unchanging ray?
Lo, when the sun streams through the wood
Upon a winter’s morn,
Where’er his silent beams intrude
The murky night is gone.
How could the patient pine have known
The morning breeze would come,
Or humble flowers anticipate
The insect’s noonday hum?
Till the new light with morning cheer
From far streamed through the aisles,
And nimbly told the forest trees
For many stretching miles.
I’ve heard within my inmost soul
Such cheerful morning news,
In the horizon of my mind
Have seen such orient hues,
As in the twilight of the dawn,
When the first bird awake,
Are heard within some silent wood,
Where they the small twigs break,
Or in the eastern skies are seen,
Before the sun appears,
The harbingers of summer heats
Which from afar he bears.
H.D.T.
FREE LOVE
My love must be as free
As is the eagle’s wing,
Hovering o’er land and sea
And every thing.
I must not dim my eye
In thy saloon,
I must not leave my sky
And nightly moon.
Be not the fowler’s net
Which stays my flight,
And craftily is set
T’ allure the sight,
But be the favoring gale
That bears me on,
And still doth fill my sail
When thou art gone.
I cannot leave my sky
For thy caprice,
True love would soar as high
As heaven is.
The eagle would not brook
Her mate thus won,
Who trained his eye to look
Beneath the sun.
H.D.T.
THE POET’S DELAY
In vain I see the morning rise,
In vain observe the western blaze,
Who idly look to other skies,
Expecting life by other ways.
Amidst such boundless wealth without,
I only still am poor within,
The birds have sung their summer out,
But still my spring does not begin.
Shall I then wait the autumn wind,
Compelled to seek a milder day,
And leave no curious nest behind,
No woods still echoing to my lay’?
H.D.T.
RUMORS FROM AN AEOLIAN HARP.
There is a vale which none hath seen,
Where foot of man has never been,
Such as here lives with toil and strife
An anxious and a sinful life.
There every virtue has its birth,
Ere it descends upon the earth,
And thither every deed returns,
Which in the generous bosom burns.
There love is warm, and youth is young,
And simple truth on every tongue,
for Virtue still adventures there,
And freely breathes her native air.
And ever, if you hearken well,
You still may hear its vesper bell,
And tread of high-souled men go by,
Their thoughts conversing with the sky.
H.D.T
