| |
| IN this lone open glade I lie, | |
| Screened by deep boughs on either hand; | |
| And at its head, to stay the eye, | |
| Those black-crowned, red-boled pine-trees stand. | |
| |
| Birds here make song, each bird has his, | 5 |
| Across the girdling city’s hum. | |
| How green under the boughs it is! | |
| How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come! | |
| |
| Sometimes a child will cross the glade | |
| To take his nurse his broken toy; | 10 |
| Sometimes a thrush flit overhead | |
| Deep in her unknown day’s employ. | |
| |
| Here at my feet what wonders pass, | |
| What endless, active life is here! | |
| What blowing daisies, fragrant grass! | 15 |
| An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear. | |
| |
| Scarce fresher is the mountain sod | |
| Where the tired angler lies, stretched out, | |
| And, eased of basket and of rod, | |
| Counts his day’s spoil, the spotted trout. | 20 |
| |
| In the huge world which roars hard by | |
| Be others happy, if they can! | |
| But in my helpless cradle I | |
| Was breathed on by the rural Pan. | |
| |
| I, on men’s impious uproar hurled, | 25 |
| Think often, as I hear them rave, | |
| That peace has left the upper world, | |
| And now keeps only in the grave. | |
| |
| Yet here is peace forever new! | |
| When I, who watch them, am away, | 30 |
| Still all things in this glade go through | |
| The changes of their quiet day. | |
| |
| Then to their happy rest they pass; | |
| The flowers close, the birds are fed, | |
| The night comes down upon the grass, | 35 |
| The child sleeps warmly in his bed. | |
| |
| Calm soul of all things! make it mine | |
| To feel, amid the city’s jar, | |
| That there abides a peace of thine | |
| Man did not make and cannot mar! | 40 |
| |
| The will to neither strive nor cry, | |
| The power to feel with others give! | |
| Calm, calm me more! nor let me die | |
| Before I have begun to live. | |
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