Nature Benigna

What power is this? What witchery wins my feet To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow, All silent as the emerald gulfs below, Down whose ice-walls the wings of twilight beat? What thrill of earth and heaven—most wild, most sweet— What answering pulse that all the senses know Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet? Mother, 'tis I reborn: I know thee well: That throb I know and all it prophesies, O Mother and Queen, beneath the olden spell Of silence, gazing from thy hills and skies! Dumb Mother, struggling with thy years to tell The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes.