And I am tired,—so tired of rigid duty, So tired of all my tired hands find to do! I yearn, I faint, for some of life's free beauty, Its loose beads with no straight string running through! Aye, laugh, if laugh you will, at my crude speech; Jus porting AT MY ENEMY'S GATE. As I passed my enemy's gate On my pathway, stealthy as Fate, Crept a shadow vague and chill: The bright spirit, the rainbow grace Of sweet, hovering thought, gave place To a nameless feeling of loss, A dark sense of something ill. Whereupon I said, in my scorn, "Nothing but thistle and thorn, "Shrewd nettle, dogwood, and dock; "Or three-leaved ivy that twines " A bleak ledge with poisonous vines, "And black lichens that incrust "The scaly crest of a rock!" Then I looked, and there, on the ground, Were two lovely children at play; The door-yard turf all around Was spotted with daisies and pinks; 642 From his apple-trees showered the notes And up from the grass-lot below And, behold! like a cloud, overhead, And I thought of our foolish strife, And "How hateful is hate!" I said. "Under all that we see of his life Is a world we never may know, With its sorrows, and solace, and dreams; He is as he is for a cause, And Nature accepts him so. She gives this foeman of mine Of the best her bounty affords, Sends him the rain and the shine, And children whom doubtless he loves; She fosters his horses and herds, And surrounds him with blossoms and birds: And why am I harder of heart To his faults than the daisies and doves? "To me so perverse and unjust, He has yet in his uncouth shell Some kernel of good, I will trust, And what is his hatred to me?" So for him began in my heart And make golden afternoon. AT SEA. The night was made for cooling shade, For silence, and for sleep; And when I was a child, I laid My hands upon my breast, and pray'd, Childlike, as then, I lie to-night, Each movement of the swaying lamp Shows how the vessel reels, And o'er her deck the billows tramp, And all her timbers strain and cramp With every shock she feels; It starts and shudders, while it burns, And in its hinged socket turns. Now swinging slow, and slanting low, And yet I know, while to and fro O hand of God! O lamp of peace! Though weak and toss'd, and ill at ease The ship's convulsive roll,— A heavenly trust my spirit calms,- The ocean sings his solemn psalms; Under the cottage-roof again, I heard the soothing summer rain. MIDSUMMER. Around this lovely valley rise O, softly on yon banks of haze Becalmed along the azure sky, |