They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps. Reason's not one that weeps.

What logic of greeting lies

Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss

The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan,

So,

(But would I could know, but would I could know,)

With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of

man,

So, with your silences purfling this silence of man

While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban,

Under the ban,

So, ye have wrought me

Designs on the night of our knowledge,-yea, ye have taught

me,

So,

That haply we know somewhat more than we know.

Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,

Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms,
Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves,
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,

Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me
Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me,-
Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet

That advise me of more than they bring,-repeat
Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought breath
From the heaven-side bank of the river of death,—

Teach me the terms of silence,—preach me

The passion of patience,-sift me,-impeach me,

And there, oh there

As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, Pray me a myriad prayer.

My gossip, the owl,-is it thou

That out of the leaves of the low-hanging bough,

As I pass to the beach, art stirred?

Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?

Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea,
Old chemist, rapt in alchemy,

Distilling silence,-lo,

That which our father-age had died to know

The menstruum that dissolves all matter-thou
Hast found it for this silence, filling now
The globéd charity of receiving space,

This solves us all : man, matter, doubt, disgrace,
Death, love, sin, sanity,

Must in yon silence, clear solution lie.

Too clear! That crystal nothing who 'll peruse ?
The blackest night could bring us brighter news.
Yet precious qualities of silence haunt
Round these vast margins, ministrant.
Oh, if thy soul's at latter gasp for space,
With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race
Just to be fellow'd, when that thou hast found
No man with room, or grace enough of bound
To entertain that New thou tell'st, thou art,—
'Tis here, 'tis here, thou canst unhand thy heart
And breathe it free, and breathe it free,

By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty.

The tide 's at full: the marsh with flooded streams
Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams.

Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies
A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies.

Shine scant with one forked galaxy,

The marsh brags ten

looped on his breast they lie.

Oh, what if a sound should be made!

Oh, what if a bound should be laid

To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a

spring,

To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the

string!

I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam
Will break as a bubble o'er-blown in a dream,—
Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night,
Over-weighted with stars, over-freighted with light,
Over-sated with beauty and silence, will seem

But a bubble that broke in a dream,

If a bound of degree to this grace be laid,

Or a sound or a motion made.

But no it is made: list! somewhere,-mystery, where?
In the leaves? in the air?

In my heart? is a motion made:

'Tis a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade. In the leaves 'tis palpable: low multitudinous stirring Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring, Have settled my lord 's to be looked for; so; they are still; But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill,— And look where the wild duck sails round the bend of the river,

And look where a passionate shiver

Expectant is bending the blades

Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades,—

And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting,

Are beating

The dark overhead as my heart beats, and steady and

free

Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea

(Run home, little streams,

With your lapfulls of stars and dreams),-
And a sailor unseen is hoisting a-peak,
For list, down the inshore curve of the creek
How merrily flutters the sail,-

And lo, in the East! Will the East unveil ?

The East is unveiled, the East hath confessed

A flush: 'tis dead; 'tis alive: 'tis dead, ere the West
Was aware of it: nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis unwithdrawn :
Have a care, sweet Heaven! 'Tis Dawn.

Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is up-
rolled:

To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold
Is builded, in shape as a bee-hive, from out of the sea:
The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the Bee,

The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee,

Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee
That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea.

Yet now the dew-drop, now the morning gray,
Shall live their little lucid sober day
Ere with the sun their souls exhale away.

Now in each pettiest personal sphere of dew
The summ'd moon shines complete as in the blue
Big dew-drop of all heaven: with these lit shrines
O'er-silvered to the farthest sea-confines,
The sacramental marsh one pious plain
Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign
Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild,
Minded of nought but peace, and of a child.

1

Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure
Of motion,-not faster than dateless Olympian leisure
Might pace with unblown ample garments from pleasure to
pleasure,-

The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling,

Forever revealing, revealing, revealing,
Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise,-'tis done!
Good-morrow, lord Sun!

With several voice, with ascription one,

The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul

Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth

roll,

Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow,

Sun.

O Artisan born in the purple,-Workman Heat,—
Parter of passionate atoms that travail to meet

lord

And be mixed in the death-cold oneness,-innermost Guest
At the marriage of elements,-fellow of publicans, blest
King in the blouse of flame, that loiterest o'er
The idle skies yet laborest fast evermore,-
Thou, in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the beat
Of the heart of a man, thou Motive,-Laborer Heat :
Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea's all news,
With his inshore greens and manifold mid-sea blues,
Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest hues
Ever shaming the maidens,-lily and rose
Confess thee, and each mild flame that glows
In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones that shine,
It is thine, it is thine :

Thou chemist of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl
Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl

In the magnet earth,-yea, thou with a storm for a heart,
Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part