Without fail

For evermore.

Here is the land,

Shaggy with wood,

With its old valley,

Mound, and flood.

But the heritors—

Fled like the flood's foam;

The lawyer, and the laws,

And the kingdom,

Clean swept herefrom.

They called me theirs,

Who so controlled me;

Yet every one

Wished to stay, and is gone.

How am I theirs,

If they cannot hold me,

But I hold them ?

When I heard the Earth-song,

I was no longer brave;

My avarice cooled

Like lust in the chill of the grave.

GOOD BYE.

GOOD bye, proud world, I'm going home, Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine; Long through thy weary crowds I roam; A river-ark on the ocean brine,

Long I've been tossed like the driven foam, But now, proud world, I'm going home.

Good bye to Flattery's fawning face,
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace,

To upstart Wealth's averted eye,

To supple Office low and high,

To crowded halls, to court, and street,

To frozen hearts, and hasting feet,

To those who go, and those who come, Good bye, proud world, I'm going home.

I'm going to my own hearth-stone

Bosomed in yon green hills, alone,
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
Where arches green the live long day
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,

And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

O when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines
Where the evening star so holy shines,

I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan ;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet.

THE RHODORA,

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER.

IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool

Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for being;

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask; I never knew ;

But in my simple ignorance suppose

The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

THE HUMBLE BEE.

BURLY dozing humble bee!

Where thou art is clime for me.

Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far off heats through seas to seek,
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zig-zag steerer, desert-cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines,
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun,

Joy of thy dominion!

Sailor of the atmosphere,

Swimmer through the waves of air,

Voyager of light and noon,

Epicurean of June,