Here at my feet what wonders pass! What endless, active life is here! What blowing daisies, fragrant grass! An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear. Scarce fresher is the mountain sod Where the tired angler lies, stretched out, And, eased of basket and of rod, Counts his day’s spoil, the spotted trout. In the huge world which roars hard by, Be others happy if they can! But in my helpless cradle I Was breathed on by the rural Pan. I, on men’s impious uproar hurled, Think often, as I hear them rave, That peace has left the upper world, And now keeps only in the grave. Yet here is peace forever new! When I who watch them am away, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day. Then to their happy rest they pass; The flowers upclose, the birds are fed, The night comes down upon the grass, The child sleeps warmly in his bed. Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar. The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel with others, give! Calm, calm me more! nor let me die Before I have begun to live. _A WISH._ I ask not that my bed of death From bands of greedy heirs be free; For these besiege the latest breath Of fortune’s favored sons, not me. I ask not each kind soul to keep Tearless, when of my death he hears. Let those who will, if any, weep! There are worse plagues on earth than tears. I ask but that my death may find The freedom to my life denied; Ask but the folly of mankind Then, then at last, to quit my side. Spare me the whispering, crowded room, The friends who come, and gape, and go; The ceremonious air of gloom,-- All which makes death a hideous show! Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head, and give The ill he cannot cure a name. Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll Of the poor sinner bound for death, His brother-doctor of the soul, To canvass with official breath The future and its viewless things,-- That undiscovered mystery Which one who feels death’s winnowing wings Must needs read clearer, sure, than he! Bring none of these; but let me be, While all around in silence lies, Moved to the window near, and see Once more, before my dying eyes,-- Bathed in the sacred dews of morn The wide aërial landscape spread,-- The world which was ere I was born, The world which lasts when I am dead; Which never was the friend of _one_, Nor promised love it could not give, But lit for all its generous sun, And lived itself, and made us live.