WHAT is the symbol underneath it all, The secret message of the throb of things: The flower tossings and the whirl of wings, The glow and scent when June makes carnival? 'Tis like a loved lost word of some old speech Man has forgotten yet can almost reach. Listen! The sap doth murmur it, the rain Chants it in sibilant monotone, the breeze Lifting a voice among the fluttered trees, Takes up the song, repeats it once again; And all the movement in the summer grass Seems pulsing to express it ere it pass. Ever and alway, iterant and low, The whisper and the hint, the half-untold Suggestion that is as the ages old, Yet fresh-faced now as in the long ago: "Seek, ye shall find, for you and I are one, Bound each to other since the years begun. "You hear the call of kinship in my voice, My very breathing makes me part of you; The gifts I offer are a residue Of your inheritance and natural choice; Man is not man who hath not eye to see My luminous gloss on Nature's mystery. "Rich-languaged, fraught with memories and dreams, I lure you back in sacred moments when You learn, oblivious to the lore of men, The lesson of the forests, fields and streams; Deep at my heart, deeper than all my mirth, The ever-eloquent meaning of the earth." In syllables of beauty, yea, with words That move like music through the summer ways, Nature doth speak, and in her every phrase, -- The choiring rivers and the lyric birds, -- She draws us from false gods, and our release Is certified by joy and love and peace. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FOR ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S EVE by MALCOLM COWLEY THE HARD TIMES IN ELFLAND; A STORY OF CHRISTMAS EVE by SIDNEY LANIER LONDON CHURCHES by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES A SONG TO DAVID by CHRISTOPHER SMART POEM FOR PICTURE: TO AN OIL PAINTING BY WINSLOW HOMER (DRIFTWOOD) by FRANK ANKENBRAND JR. |