It hath its lesson. Beautiful things Are given like retreating wings; Not to be gathered, never won, But sent to lead the spirit on; Winning the upward eye of prayer, As ’twere a finger pointing there, Till we have followed to the sky An angel, imperceptibly. III. It is a holy night. The moon Hath made it like a gentler noon, And every deep and starry eye Is waking in the summer sky, As if its light were made alone For restless hearts to gaze upon. There are no voices, and the stir Of the soft south goes lightlier Among the branches, and the deep, Felt stillness of a world asleep, Is on my spirit like the touch Of a sweet friend who loveth much. I’ve left my books. I cannot damp My heart beside a weary lamp While heaven is set with stars, and I Am not to sit down quietly, And on a musty altar fling The birthright of a glorious wing. Reason who will; while skies of June Are molten by this silent moon, While flowers have breath, and voices creep From running brook and fountain-leap, While any thing is left to love In this fair earth and heaven above, I would not wear a fettered limb To make Chaldea’s wisdom dim. Why, what is duty? Sky and sea, Thou promised heaven! are types of thee; The earth is like a flowing cup Of perfect beauty mingled up; The very elements of heaven, Life, light, and music, freely given; The world an Eden, and we thirst For every voice and fountain-burst; And yet, we’re told, at duty’s call We must forego--forget them all! How has the foot of nature trod The pathway of a perfect God, How are the springs of earnest thought With his diviner cunning wrought, If all that makes us feel our fate Not altogether desolate-- This burning love for beautiful things, Is sealed among forbidden springs, And we must throw a gift of fire Aside like a neglected lyre? BETTER MOMENTS. My mother’s voice! how often creeps Its cadence on my lonely hours, Like healing sent on wings of sleep, Or dew to the unconscious flowers! I can forget her melting prayer While leaping pulses madly fly; But in the still unbroken air, Her gentle tone comes stealing by, And years, and sin, and manhood flee, And leave me at my mother’s knee. The book of nature, and the print Of beauty on the whispering sea, Give aye to me some lineament Of what I have been taught to be. My heart is harder, and perhaps My manliness hath drunk up tears, And there’s a mildew in the lapse Of a few miserable years-- But nature’s book is even yet With all my mother’s lessons writ.