Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO NATURE, by FREDERICK WILLIAM HENRY MYERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO NATURE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O mother gravely mild
Last Line: O earth, and night, and nought, enfold her once again!
Alternate Author Name(s): Myers, Frederic
Subject(s): Nature


I

O MOTHER gravely mild,
Soul of the waste and wild,
Behold me compassed in thine icy calm!
Athirst, alone, again
I call thee and complain;—
Here in thy temple raise my solitary psalm.

II

Athirst;—yet not as though
Thy fountains of the snow
Could quench me, raving headlong from the hill;
Let other longings cease
With plenty and with peace;
Athirst to the end is he whom only love can fill.

III

The light loves blush and bloom;
They perish; they perfume
A flying hour, and make a slight hurt whole:
What more than this might be
Hath heaven revealed to me
In secret long ago, in sabbaths of the soul.

IV

When winds the Alpine horn,
More than itself reborn
Peals in the magic answer of the hill;
Afresh, afar, afloat,
A new majestic note
From other lips is blown, in other airs is still.

V

Such was the love I sought;
So to the hidden thought
Might flash the unspoken answer of the eyes;
No need of kiss or speech
When, each inmixt in each,
Thy heart in hers will call, and hers in thine replies.

VI

O hope too fond and fair!
O angel in the air!
O dying dream, which yet to dream was joy!
Prayed longest, followed most
Of all that heavenly host
Who lured from child to man the vision-haunted boy.

VII

Sometimes the flying flame
Was Fortune and was Fame;
Thro' cloudy rifts a wildering clarion rang;—
Oftener an Orphic crown,
From deep heaven fluttering down,
Lit on a poet's head, and sweet the poet sang.

VIII

But first and last and best,
Most longed-for, least confest,
One form unknown descended as a dove;
Low in my soul I heard
One new melodious word,
And all the boy's frame trembled at the touch of Love.

IX

They melt, they fail, they fade,
Those shapes in air arrayed,—
Love with the rest; ah, Love, the heavenly friend!
Only this Mother mild,
Guileless as unbeguiled,
Here in her holy place endureth to the end.

X

O fast and flying shroud!
Cold Horns that cleave the cloud!
Uplifted Silence unaware of man!
Softlier, ye torrents, flow!
Slide softly, thundering snow!
Let all in darkness end, as darkly all began!

XI

Hence, hence I too had birth,
One soul with the ancient Earth,
Beyond this human ancestry of pain:—
My soul was even as ye;—
She was,—and she would be;—
O Earth, and Night, and Nought, enfold her once again!





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