Radiant Sister of the Day, Awake! arise! and come away! To the wild woods and the plains, _25 To the pools where winter rains Image all the roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Sapless, gray, and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun-- _30 To the sandhills of the sea, Where the earliest violets be. Now the last day of many days, All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest and the last, is dead, _35 Rise, Memory, and write its praise! And do thy wonted work and trace The epitaph of glory fled; For now the Earth has changed its face, A frown is on the Heaven's brow. _40 We wandered to the Pine Forest That skirts the Ocean's foam, The lightest wind was in its nest, The tempest in its home. The whispering waves were half asleep, _45 The clouds were gone to play, And on the woods, and on the deep The smile of Heaven lay. It seemed as if the day were one Sent from beyond the skies, _50 Which shed to earth above the sun A light of Paradise. We paused amid the pines that stood, The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude _55 With stems like serpents interlaced. How calm it was--the silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound _60 The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. It seemed that from the remotest seat _65 Of the white mountain's waste To the bright flower beneath our feet, A magic circle traced;-- A spirit interfused around, A thinking, silent life; _70 To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature's strife;-- And still, it seemed, the centre of The magic circle there, Was one whose being filled with love _75 The breathless atmosphere. Were not the crocuses that grew Under that ilex-tree As beautiful in scent and hue As ever fed the bee? _80 We stood beneath the pools that lie Under the forest bough, And each seemed like a sky Gulfed in a world below; A purple firmament of light _85 Which in the dark earth lay, More boundless than the depth of night, And clearer than the day-- In which the massy forests grew As in the upper air, _90 More perfect both in shape and hue Than any waving there. Like one beloved the scene had lent To the dark water's breast Its every leaf and lineament _95 With that clear truth expressed;