And charm some grovellers to uplift their eyes
And suddenly wax conscious of the skies.
"Master, good e'en to ye!" a woodman said,
Who the low hedge was trimming with his shears.
"This hour is fine"--the Poet bowed his head.
"More fine," he thought, "O friend! to me appears
The sunset than to you; finer the spread
Of orange lustre through these azure spheres,
Where little clouds lie still, like flocks of sheep,
Or vessels sailing in God's other deep.
"O finer far! What work so high as mine,
Interpreter betwixt the world and man,
Nature's ungathered pearls to set and shrine,
The mystery she wraps her in to scan;
Her unsyllabic voices to combine,
And serve her with such love as poets can;
With mortal words, her chant of praise to bind,
Then die, and leave the poem to mankind?
"O fair, O fine, O lot to be desired!
Early and late my heart appeals to me,
And says, 'O work, O will--Thou man, be fired
To earn this lot,'--she says, 'I would not be
A worker for mine OWN bread, or one hired
For mine OWN profit. O, I would be free
To work for others; love so earned of them
Should be my wages and my diadem.
"'Then when I died I should not fall,' says she,
'Like dropping flowers that no man noticeth,
But like a great branch of some stately tree
Rent in a tempest, and flung down to death,
Thick with green leafage--so that piteously
Each passer by that ruin shuddereth,
And saith, The gap this branch hath left is wide;
The loss thereof can never be supplied.
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