Nature and Elements

I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and majesty of the ships, And the magic of the sea.

By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks… Stand like Druids of old.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight.

Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.

It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company.

It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company.

I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls.

Makes awful lightning.

Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully, Render praise and favor.

Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.

In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods.

In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods.

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

It was a dark and stormy night. 1

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

Child, you are like a flower, So sweet and pure and fair. I look at you, and sadness Touches me with a prayer.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star, Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone.