Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

First Series. 26. For Nature daily through her grand design

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.