Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, And Buddha, in one sheaf -- and champs and chews, With slantly-churning jaws, and swallows down; Then slowly plants a mighty forefoot out, And makes advance to futureward, one inch. So: they have played their part. And to this end? This, God? This, troublous-breeding Earth? This, Sun Of hot, quick pains? To this no-end that ends, These Masters wrought, and wept, and sweated blood, And burned, and loved, and ached with public shame, And found no friends to breathe their loves to, save Woods and wet pillows? This was all? This Ox? "Nay," quoth a sum of voices in mine ear, "God's clover, we, and feed His Course-of-things; The pasture is God's pasture; systems strange Of food and fiberment He hath, whereby The general brawn is built for plans of His To quality precise. Kinsman, learn this: The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man. Tease not thy vision with vain search for ends. The End of Means is art that works by love. The End of Ends . . . in God's Beginning's lost." ____ West Chester, Pa., Summer of 1876. The Waving of the Corn. Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled Thy plough to ring this solitary tree With clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field, In cool green radius twice my length may be -- Scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield, To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me, That here come oft together -- daily I, Stretched prone in summer's mortal ecstasy, Do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this morn With waving of the corn. Unseen, the farmer's boy from round the hill Whistles a snatch that seeks his soul unsought, And fills some time with tune, howbeit shrill; The cricket tells straight on his simple thought -- Nay, 'tis the cricket's way of being still; The peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught; Far down the wood, a one-desiring dove Times me the beating of the heart of love: And these be all the sounds that mix, each morn, With waving of the corn. From here to where the louder passions dwell, Green leagues of hilly separation roll: Trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell. Ye terrible Towns, ne'er claim the trembling soul That, craftless all to buy or hoard or sell, From out your deadly complex quarrel stole To company with large amiable trees, Suck honey summer with unjealous bees, And take Time's strokes as softly as this morn Takes waving of the corn. ____ West Chester, Pa., 1876. The Song of the Chattahoochee. Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.