Page:The college beautiful, and other poems.djvu/54

42 Lo, the delight of Nature! Ye who feel Yourselves but slaves beneath the blind control Of Circumstance, and bear his insolent heel On your submissive necks, who yield the soul To the despondent hour that wasteth it, Forgetting how on rude and paltry scroll Fair signs and sacred words may yet be writ, Come to our joyous mother ! Where she leads Her fleecy streamlets down the hillsides, sit And let the dawning wind that wakes the reeds Refresh your heavy lids, whilst ye behold How sunshine revels in the lowliest weeds, And only human growths refuse to fold, In narrow cups their heritage of gold. And ye who bow before the Commonplace, — A generous peasant but a clownish king, — Return to Nature, till the oldtime grace Flow once again from that sequestered spring, Deep in the dim recesses of the heart, Where each man hides a poet. Would ye bring