Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/315

Rh Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,

Upon a winter's morn,

Where'er his silent beams intrude

The murky night is gone.

How could the patient pine have known

The morning breeze would come,

Or humble flowers anticipate

The insect's noonday hum,—

Till the new light with morning cheer

From far streamed through the aisles,

And nimbly told the forest trees

For many stretching miles?

I 've heard within my inmost soul

Such cheerful morning news,

In the horizon of my mind

Have seen such orient hues,

As in the twilight of the dawn,

When the first birds awake,

Are heard within some silent wood,

Where they the small twigs break,

Or in the eastern skies are seen,

Before the sun appears,

The harbingers of summer heats

Which from afar he bears.

Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide away in thin volumes like mist and smoke, till at length, some warm morning, perchance, I see a sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, and I float as high above the fields with it. I can recall to mind the stillest summer hours, in which the grasshopper sings over the