Iii

No thing in the world to the heart seems wrong When the soul of a man walks out with song; Wherever they go, glad hand in hand, And glove in glove, The round of the land is rainbow-spanned, And the meaning of life they understand Is love, is love. Let the heart be open, the soul be strong, And life will be glad as a Christmas song.

The Puritans' Christmas

Their only thought religion, What Christmas joys had they, The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers who Knew naught of holiday?--

A log-church in the clearing 'Mid solitudes of snow, The wild-beast and the wilderness, And lurking Indian foe.

No time had they for pleasure, Whom God had put to school; A sermon was their Christmas cheer, A psalm their only Yule.

They deemed it joy sufficient,-- Nor would Christ take it ill,-- That service to Himself and God Employed their spirits still.

And so through faith and prayer Their powers were renewed, And souls made strong to shape a World, And tame a solitude.

A type of revolution, Wrought from an iron plan, In the largest mold of liberty God cast the Puritan.

A better land they founded, That Freedom had for bride, The shackles of old despotism Struck from her limbs and side.

With faith within to guide them, And courage to perform, A nation, from a wilderness, They hewed with their strong arm.

For liberty to worship, And right to do and dare, They faced the savage and the storm With voices raised in prayer.

For God it was who summoned, And God it was who led, And God would not forsake the love That must be clothed and fed.

Great need had they of courage! Great need of faith had they! And lacking these--how otherwise For us had been this day!

Spring

(After the German of Goethe, Faust, II)

When on the mountain tops ray-crowned Apollo Turns his swift arrows, dart on glittering dart, Let but a rock glint green, the wild goats follow Glad-grazing shyly on each sparse-grown part.

Rolled into plunging torrents spring the fountains; And slope and vale and meadowland grow green; While on ridg'd levels of a hundred mountains, Far fleece by fleece, the woolly flocks convene.

With measured stride, deliberate and steady, The scattered cattle seek the beetling steep, But shelter for th' assembled herd is ready In many hollows that the walled rocks heap:

The lairs of Pan; and, lo, in murmuring places, In bushy clefts, what woodland Nymphs arouse! Where, full of yearning for the azure spaces, Tree, crowding tree, lifts high its heavy boughs.

Old forests, where the gnarly oak stands regnant Bristling with twigs that still repullulate, And, swoln with spring, with sappy sweetness pregnant, The maple blushes with its leafy weight.

And, mother-like, in cirques of quiet shadows, Milk flows, warm milk, that keeps all things alive; Fruit is not far, th' abundance of the meadows, And honey oozes from the hollow hive.

Lines

Within the world of every man's desire Three things have power to lift his soul above, Through dreams, religion, and ecstatic fire, The star-like shapes of Beauty, Truth, and Love.

I never hoped that, this side far-off Heaven, These three,--whom all exalted souls pursue,-- I e'er should see; until to me 't was given, Lady, to meet the three, made one, in you.

When Ships put out to Sea