For Nature daily through her grand design Breathes contradiction where she seems most clear, For I have held of her the gift to hear And felt indeed endowed of sense divine When I have found by guarded insight fine, Cold April flowers in the green end of June, And thought myself possessed of Nature's ear When by the lonely mill-brook into mine, Seated on slab or trunk asunder sawn, The night-hawk blew his horn at summer noon; And in the rainy midnight I have heard The ground sparrow's long twitter from the pine, And the catbird's silver song, the wakeful bird That to the lighted window sings for dawn. |