Poetry Archives

There is a spot, far from the world’s uproar,
  Amid great mountains,
Where softly sleeps a lake, to whose still shore
  Steal silvery fountains,
That hide beneath the leafy underwood,
And blend their voices with the solitude.

Save where the beaver-meadow’s olive sheen
  In sunlight glimmers,
On every side, a mass of waving green,
  The forest shimmers
And oft re-echoes with the black bear’s tread,
That silences the song birds overhead.

Here thickly droops the moss from patriarch trees,
  And loons fly wailing.
Here king-birds’ screams come hoarsely down the breeze
  And hawks are sailing
Above the trees. Here Nature dwells alone,
Of man unknowing, and to man unknown.

Smiling, she rises when the morning air,
  The dawn just breaking,
Bids the still woodlands for the day prepare,
  And Life, awaking,
Welcomes the Sun, whose bride, the Morn, is kissed
And, blushing, lays aside her veil of mist.

Here Nature with each passing hour reveals
  Peculiar graces:
At noonday she grows languid, and then steals
  To shady places,
And revels in their coolness, at her feet
A stream, that fills with music her retreat.

At eve she comes, and, blushing like a maid,
  Unrobes in shadows,
Bathes in the lake, and wanders through the glade
  And o’er the meadows.
From her dank locks, wherever she doth pass,
The diamond dew-drops dripping to the grass.

And then she sleeps; when o’er the lake’s calm tide
  The Moon comes stealing,
And draws from her the veil of night aside,
  Her charms revealing,
While silent stars keep ceaseless watch above,
And all the earth breathes peace and rest and love.