Poem by Alexander Anderson

The Long Deep Grass in Springing

The long deep grass is springing by the edges of the streams,
And the trees have found a secret that bursts out in leafy gleams;
So to match this hour with gladness let us to the woods away,
And take with us some poet that shall teach us what to say.

Shall it be those mighty monarchs of all eloquence and ease?
No, their songs have not the quiet that will make us love the trees;
Keats, that only lived a summer, sung a song so full and sweet
That the gods in bounty gave him flowers for his winding sheet.

Yes, his song is wise and worthy of the stream and wood, I own,
But another is behind him with a fuller riper tone;
Therefore let the lore of Wordsworth be our only guide to-day,
As we lie within the long deep woods and hear the branches sway.

The solemn shady forest with its gentle pulse of wind,
Is a type of all the quiet in an earnest poet's mind—
Haunting not the writhing city, but with open placid look,
Watching ever still the meadow and the sparkle of the brook.

I can fancy as I lie beneath the music of the boughs
That unseen Hamadryads wreathe the buds around their brows;
That from the vista'd depths whose gloom the vision scarce can span,
Think I hear the dreamy murmurs from the drowsy pipe of Pan.

Ah, this gentle faith has pass'd away, and in the glen and wood
Sweet spirits have no more a place to fill the solitude;
But the vision still is with us, and their beauty is a sky
That looks down upon the ages with an immortality.

Let the heart fill up with wisdom in a quiet hour like this,
Let the flowers that grow around us teach their happy mysteries.
Let the great thoughts of the mighty sweep aside the daily earth,
Till their spirits leap within us like a child before its birth;

So that in their ampler breathing we can feel the soul outburst,
And grow into high impulses, each one wider than the first,
Till it leaps in very triumph from the daily thought of clay,
And becomes a part and being of the brightness of this day.

It is sweet to think this world, with its toil, and rush, and jar,
Cannot take this being from us, or have power to shake or mar.
Therefore, when thy heart is weary, and thy thoughts grow into pain,
Take the woods, and, in their shadows, get thy quiet back again.

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4. A Castle Old and Grey
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