Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/302

 THE POET'S BOOKS.

��A POET should be conversant with God In all his works. For, from the untrodden cliff Where fiery Andes mocks the driven cloud To the obscurest moss which arctic storms Deny an efflorescence from the roar Of the wild rainbow-cinctur'd cataract, To the slight ripple of the loneliest lake, All speak of Him.

Choose not the ponderous tomes Where Science wastes away the oil of life, And early hoary, seeks the voiceless tomb, Its lessons still unlearn 'd ; nor lose thyself In the entangling lore of many lands, Until thy mother tongue seem strange to thee. Much knowledge is much toil, and hath no end. But come thou forth, amid the breeze-swept trees, And learn their language. Ask the peaceful vales, Where roam the herds, or where the reaper plies His busy sickle ask the solemn sea, With all its foaming wilderness of waves,

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