Susan Fenimore Cooper

“ The melancholy tale is plain;
The leaves of spring, the summer flowers
Have bloomed and died again.
The sweet and silver-sandaled Dew,
Which, like a maiden, fed the flowers,
Hath waned into the beldame Frost,
And walked amid our bowers.
Some buds there were—sad hearts, be still!
Which looked awhile unto the sky,
Then breathed but once or lived, to tell
How sweetest things may die!
And some must blight where many bloom;
But, blight or bloom, the fruit must fall!
Why sigh for spring or summer flowers,
Since winter gathers all?
He gathers all—but chide him not ”

“ All the plants belong to thee;
All that summer hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice.
Man for thee does sow and plow;
Farmer he, and landlord thou!
Thou dost innocently enjoy;
Nor does thy luxury destroy.
The shepherd gladly heareth thee,
More harmonious than he.
Thee country hinds with gladness hear,
Prophet of the ripen’d year!
Thee Phœbus loves, and does inspire;
Phœbus is himself thy sire.
To thee, of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth.
Happy insect! happy thou,
Dost neither age nor winter know. ”

“ The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;
Where feeds the moose and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnea hang its twin-born heads;
And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.
He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,
With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls—
One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
Declares the close of its green century.
Low lies the plant to whose creation went
Sweet influence from every element ”

“ No kin they bear to labor’s drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose,
And where they fly for dinner no one knows;
The dew-drop feeds them not; they love the shine
Of noon, whose suns may bring them golden wine.
All day they’re playing in their Sunday dress—
When night reposes they can do no less;
Then to the heath-bell’s purple hood they fly,
And like to princes in their slumbers, lie
Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all
On silken beds in roomy, painted hall.
So merrily they spend their summer day,
Or in the corn-fields, or in new-mown hay. ”

“ How many generations have they not charmed with their undying melodies! They would almost seem by their sweetness to have soothed the inexorable powers of Time and Death. Were an old Greek or an ancient Roman to rise from the dust this summer’s day—were he to awaken, after ages of sleep, to walk his native soil again, scarce an object on which his eye fell would wear a familiar aspect; scarce a sound which struck his ear but would vibrate there most strangely; yet with the dawn, rising from the plain of Marathon, or the Latin Hills, he would hear the same noble lark which sung in his boyhood ”

“ The swallow is one of my favorite birds, and a rival of the nightingale; for he cheers my sense of seeing as much as the other does my sense of hearing. He is the glad prophet of the year—the harbinger of the best season: he lives a life of enjoyment among the loveliest forms of Nature. Winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England, in autumn, for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa. He has always objects of pursuit, and his success is secure. Even the beings selected for his prey are poetical, beautiful, and transient. ”

“ The busy bee, that round your listening ear
Murmurs with drowsy hum;
The faithful turtles, perched on oak-trees near,
Moaning their mates’ sad doom.
And ever in the distance her sweet song
Murmurs lorn Philomel;
While the hoar forest’s echoing glades prolong
Her love and music well.
And 'midst the grass slow creeps the rivulet,
In whose bright limpid stream
The blue sky and the world of boughs are met,
Mirrored in one bright gleam.
And of the elm the hoar and silvery leaves,
The slumbering winds scarce blow,
Which, pictured in the bright and tremulous waves,
Follow their motion slow. ”

“ What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear, keen joyance
Languor can not be:
Shades of annoyance
Never come near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.
Waking, or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream;
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught ”

“ Autumn is a favorite season with American poets; they have taken great delight in singing the high-toned magnificence of the season, as well as that delicacy and sweetness of aspect which so often adds an exquisite charm to the brilliancy of autumnal beauty under our native skies. The poets of Europe have scarcely sung the delights of Spring with more eloquent fervor. We can not wonder that such should be the case; from the first tinge of peculiar coloring to the last smile of the Indian Summer, the season is full of interest and beauty, of ever-varying aspects. ”

“ The leaves and blossoms growing.
For leafy thickness is not yet
Earth’s naked breast to screen,
Though every dripping branch is set
With shoots of tender green.
Sure, since I looked at early morn,
These honeysuckle buds
Have swelled to double growth; that thorn
Hath put forth larger studs;
That lilac’s cleaving cones have burst,
The milk-white flowers revealing;
Even now upon my senses first,
Methinks their sweets are stealing
The very earth, the steaming air,
Is all with fragrance rife;
And grace and beauty everywhere
Are flushing into life.
Down, down they come—those fruitful stores! ”

“ We thread the earth in silence,
In silence build our bowers—
And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh a-top, sweet flowers.
The dear lumpish baby,
Humming with the May-bee,
Hails us with his bright star, stumbling through the grass;
The honey-dropping moon,
On a night in June,
Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the bridegroom pass.
Age, the wither’d clinger,
On us mutely gazes,
And wraps the thought of his last bed in his childhood’s daisies.
See (and scorn all duller
Taste) how heav’n loves color;
How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green ”

“ That Nature vails; the fitful breeze
From the thick pine low murmuring draws,
Then dies in flutterings midst the trees.
The bee is slumbering in the thistle,
And, now and then, a broken whistle,
A tread—a hum—a tap—is heard
Through the dry leaves, in grass and bush,
As insect, animal, and bird
Rouse brief from their lethargic hush.
Then e’en these pleasant sounds would cease,
And a dread stillness all things lock:
The aspen seem like sculptured rock,
And not a tassel thread be shaken,
The monarch pine’s deep trance to waken,
And Nature settle prone in drowsy peace. ”

“ The verdure of the meadow-land
Is creeping to the hills;
The sweet, blue-bosom’d violets
Are blowing by the rills;
The lilac has a load of balm
For every wind that stirs,
And the larch stands green and beautiful,
Amid the somber firs.
There’s perfume upon every wind—
Music in every tree—
Dews for the moisture-loving flowers—
Sweets for the sucking bee;
The sick come forth for the healing South;
The young are gathering flowers;
And life is a tale of poetry,
That is told by golden hours. ”

“ Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-color’d May,
And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drain’d not by the day ”

“ Of sullen light—no obscure, trembling hues.
Come; we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring; it flows silently
O’er its soft bed of verdure. All is still—
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the nightingale begins its song,
“Most musical, most melancholy” bird!
A melancholy bird! Oh, idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy. ”

“ Fringing the forest’s devious edge,
Half-rob’d appears the hawthorn hedge;
Or to the distant eye displays,
Weakly green its budding sprays.
The swallow, for a moment seen,
Skims in haste the village green;
From the gray moor, on feeble wing,
The screaming plovers idly spring;
The butterfly, gay-painted, soon
Explores awhile the tepid noon,
And fondly trusts its tender dyes
To fickle suns and flattering skies.
Fraught with a transient, frozen shower,
If a cloud should haply lower,
Sailing o’er the landscape dark,
Mute on a sudden is the lark ”

“ By the wild winds which plow the lonely lake,
And in their maddening rush the crested mountains shake.
The earth lies buried in a shroud of snow;
Life lingers and would die, but thy return
Gives to their gladden’d hearts an overflow
Of all the power that brooded in the urn
Of their chill’d frames, and then they proudly spurn
All bands that would confine, and give to air
Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty, till they burn,
When, on a dewy morn, thou dartest there
Rich waves of gold to wreathe with fairer light the fair. ”

“ She yields her breath, and there reluctant dies!
William Somerville, 1692–1742. A HUNTER’S MATIN.
Up, comrades, up! the morn’s awake
Upon the mountain side,
The curlew’s wing hath swept the lake,
And the deer has left the tangled brake,
To drink from the limpid tide.
Up, comrades, up! the mead-lark’s note
And the plover’s cry o’er the prairie float;
The squirrel he springs from his covert now,
To prank it away on the chestnut bough,
Where the oriole’s pendent nest, high up,
Is rock’d on the swaying trees,
While the hum-bird sips from the harebell’s cup,
As it bends to the morning breeze. ”

“ And groves and grottoes where I lay,
And vistas shooting beams of day.
Wide and wider spreads the vale,
As circles on a smooth canal.
The mountains round, unhappy fate!
Sooner or later, of all height,
Withdraw their summits from the skies,
And lessen as the others rise.
Still the prospect wider spreads,
Adds a thousand woods and meads;
Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly-risen hill.
Now I gain the mountain’s brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapors intervene,
But the gay, the open scene,
Does the face of Nature show
In all the hues of heaven’s bow! ”

“ And hail with song the promise of the vine.
In curious cells the bees digest their spoil,
When vernal sunshine animates their toil,
And little birds, in warblings sweet and clear,
Salute thee, Maia, loveliest of the year:
Thee, on their deeps, the tuneful halcyons hail,
In streams the swan, in woods the nightingale.
If earth rejoices with new verdure gay,
And shepherds pipe, and flocks exulting play,
And sailors roam, and Bacchus leads his throng,
And bees to toil, and birds awake to song,
Shall the glad bard be mute in tuneful spring,
And, warm with love and joy, forget to sing? ”

“ On tender blades the dew;
And the spring-landscape’s trembling likeness sways
Clear in the streamlet’s blue.
Fair is the rocky fount, the blossomed hedge,
Groves stained with golden light;
Fair is the star of eve, that on the edge
Of purple clouds shines bright.
Fair is the meadow’s green—the valley’s copse—
The hillock’s dress of flowers—
The alder-brook—the reed-encircled pond,
O’er-snowed with blossom-showers. ”

“ They only, as priests and prophets of the One Living God, beheld the natural world in the holy light of truth. Small as was the space the children of Israel filled among the nations of the earth, the humblest individual of their tribes knew that the God of Abraham was the Lord God of Hosts, and that all things visible were but the works of his hands. “The Lord made the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;” they bowed the knee to no one object “in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.” Truth is, of its nature, sublime. ”

“ It stands in a corner of the common, where the hedge-rows go curving off into a sort of bay round a clear bright pond, the earliest haunt of the swallow. A deep, woody green lane, such as Hobbima or Ruysdael might have painted—a lane that hints of nightingales, forms one boundary of the garden, and a sloping meadow the other; while the cottage itself, a low, thatched, irregular building, backed by a blooming orchard, and covered with honeysuckle and jessamine, looks like the chosen abode of snugness and comfort. ”

“ Chrysostom, “to the vault of heaven, and around thee on the open fields in which herds graze by the water-side; who does not despise all the creations of art, when, in the stillness of his spirit, he watches with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours its golden light over the face of the earth; when, resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath the somber shade of a thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the far-receding and hazy distance.” ”

“ The pipe of early shepherd dim descried
In the lone valley; echoing far and wide
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above;
The hollow murmur of the ocean tide;
The hum of bees, the linnet’s lay of love,
And the full choir that wakes the universal grove
81The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark;
Crown’d with her pail the tripping milk-maid sings;
The whistling plowman stalks afield; and hark!
Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings;
Through rustling corn the hare, astonish’d, springs;
Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour—
The partridge bursts away on whirring wings ”

“ Inhales your spirit from the frost-wing’d gale
And freer breathes of heaven.
Lydia H. Sigourney. TO THE BRAMBLE FLOWER.
Thy fruit full well the schoolboy knows,
Wild bramble of the brake!
So, put thou forth thy small white rose;
I love it for his sake.
Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow
O’er all the fragrant bowers,
Thou need’st not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers;
For dull the eye, the heart is dull
That can not feel how fair,
Amid all beauty, beautiful
Thy tender blossoms are! ”