Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/119



Hid in the mountains, in the dark still woods Where from the cloudy heights, the eagle’s screech, But barely reaches to the human ear, There leaning gainst an aged stately fir HE stands alone in meditation deep

When in the noonday heat the forest sleeps, Then o’er the flowered carpet of green moss He loves to steep his quickly roaming gaze As if within the moss and sparse grown grass He seeks to find the agelong, constant laws, That gave to Nature too, its life and form. He showers pearls here upon a bloom, And here upon a gay-tinged butterfly That slumbers in the full-bloomed fernery, Struck by the arrow of the noonday sun, He paints the semblance of a gruesome skull. A golden fly he rescues from a trap Straightens a bluebell in the verdant moss That bent perhaps beneath the nimble feet Of a fleeing deer, that sped across the green. Yon silver threads of a sheer spun spider web He weaves with nimble fingers in a net That spreads from branch to branch its gossamer. But suddenly when with the evening fogs, The sun’s bright diadem no longer crowns his head, Then first begins his many-sided work. For he either lights upon the crimson skies The blazing faggots of eternal stars, Or else he locks within the flower-cups, Their scented amber, that with the break of day, They’d sweeten with their breath the morning air. And often too within the fogs grey veil He leans above the mounts, and spreads thereon The cool, dark colored spreading ivy leaves, Or else he plants into the barren rocks Evergreen flowers of the houseleek plant. And when the star bespeckled cloak of night Falls finally upon his mighty back And on his forehead the shadows of the night Are firmly clasped by the moonbeams changing light, He flies across the slum’bring Universe, Then Nature shudders when his cloak’s dark hem Touches the sleeping dale and sloping mountainside