NATURA
VICTRIX.
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ON
the crag I sat in wonder,
Stars above me, forests under;
Through the valleys came and went
Tempest forces never spent,
And the gorge sent up the thunder
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the stream within it pent.
Round me with majestic bearing
Stood the giant mountains, wearing
Helmets of eternal snows,
Cleft by nature’s labour
throes—
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Monster
faces mutely staring
Upward into God’s repose.
At my feet in desolation
Swayed the pines, a shadowy nation,
Round the woodlake deep and
dread,
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Round
the river glacier-fed, [Page 64]
Where a ghostly undulation
Shakes its subterranean bed.
And I cried, “O wilderness!
Mountains! which the wind caresses,
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In
a savage love sublime,
Through the bounds of space and
time,
All your moods and deep distresses
Roll around me like a chime!
“Lo, I hear the mighty chorus
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Of
the elements that bore us
Down the course of nature’s
stream,
Onward in a haunted dream
Towards the darkness, where before us
Time and death forgotten seem!
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“Now behold the links of lightning,
Round the neck of storm-god tightening,
Madden him with rage and shame
Till he smites the earth with
flame,
In the darkening and the brightening
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| Of
the clouds on which he came! [Page 65]
“Nature! at whose will are driven
Tides of ocean, winds of heaven,
Thou who rulest near and far
Forces grappling sun and star,
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Is
to thee the knowledge given
Whence these came and what they
are?
“Is thy calm the calm of knowing
Whence the force is, whither going?
Is it but the blank despair
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Of
the wrecked, who does not care
Out at sea what wind is blowing
To the death that waits him there?
“Mother Nature, stern aggressor,
Of thy child the mind-possessor,
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Thou
art in us like a flood,
Welling through out thought and
blood—
Force evolving great from lesser,
As the blossom from the bud.
“Yea, I love thy fixed, enduring
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Times
and seasons, life procuring [Page 66]
From abysmal heart of thine;
And my spirit would resign
All its dreams and hopes alluring
With thy spirit to combine.
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“Would that I, amid the splendour
Of the thunder-blasts, could render
Back the dismal dole of birth,
Fusing soul-clouds in the girth
Of thy rock breasts, or the tender |
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| Green
of everlasting earth.
“Haply, when the scud was flying
And the lurid daylight dying
Through the rain-smoke on the
sea,
Thoughtless, painless, one with
thee,
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I,
in perfect bondage lying,
Should forever thus be free.
“Mighty spirits, who have striven
Up life’s ladder-rounds to heaven,
Or ye freighted ones who fell
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On
the poppy slopes of hell, [Page 67]
When the soul was led or driven,
Knew ye not who wrought the spell?
“Understood not each his brother
From the features of our mother
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Stamped
on every human face?
Did not earth, man’s dwelling-place,
Draw ye to her as no other,
With a stronger bond than grace?
“Tempest hands the forests rending,
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Placid
stars the night attending,
Mountains, storm-clouds, land
and sea,
Nature!—make me one with
thee;
From my soul its pinions rending,
Chain me to thy liberty.
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“Hark! the foot of death is nearing,
And my spirit aches with fearing,
Hear me, mother, hear my cry,
Merge me in the harmony
Of thy voice which stars are hearing
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| Wonder-stricken
in the sky. [Page 68]
“Mother, will no sorrow move thee?
Does the silence heartless prove thee?
Thou who from the rocks and
rain
Mad’st this soul, take
back again
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What
thy fingers wrought to love thee
Through the furnace of its pain.
“Giant boulders, roll beside me;
Tangled ferns, bow down and hide me,
Hide me from the face of death;
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Or,
great Nature, on thy breath
Send some mighty words to guide me
Till the demon vanisheth.”
Then, as sweet as organ playing,
Came a voice, my fears allaying,
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From the mountains and the sea,
“Wouldst thou, soul, be
one with me,
In thy might the slayer slaying?
Wrestle not with what must be.”
Heart and spirit in devotion,
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Vibrant
with divine emotion, [Page 69]
Bowed before that mighty sound,
And amid the dark around
Quaffed the strength of land and ocean
In a sacrament profound.
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Then I burst my bonds asunder,
And my voice rose in the thunder
With a full and powerful breath,
Strong for what great nature saith,
And I bade the stars in wonder
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| See
me slay the slayer—death. [Page 70] |
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