The World in the Open Air

Come, while in freshness and dew it lies,To the world that is under the free blue skies!Leave ye man’s home, and forget his care--There breathes no sigh on the dayspring’s air.

Come to the woods, in whose mossy dellsA light, all made for the poet dwells--A light, colour’d softly by tender leaves,Whence the primrose a mellower glow receives.

The stock-dove is there in the beechen tree,And the lulling tone of the honey-bee;And the voice of cool waters midst feathery fern,Shedding sweet sounds from some hidden urn.

There is life, there is youth, there is tameless mirth,Where the streams, with the lilies they wear, have birth;There is peace where the alders are whispering low:Come from man’s dwellings with all their woe!

Yes! we will come--we will leave behindThe homes and the sorrows of human kind.It is well to rove where the river leadsIts bright blue vein along sunny meads:

It is well through the rich wild woods to go,And to pierce the haunts of the fawn and doe;And to hear the gushing of gentle springs,When the heart has been fretted by worldly stings;

And to watch the colours that flit and pass,With insect-wings, through the wavy grass;And the silvery gleams o’er the ash-tree’s bark,Borne in with a breeze through the foliage dark.

Joyous and far shall our wanderings be,As the flight of birds o’er the glittering sea:To the woods, to the dingles where violets blow,We will bear no memory of earthly woe.

But if, by the forest-brook, we meetA line like the pathway of former feet;If, midst the hills, in some lonely spot,We reach the gray ruins of tower or cot;--

If the cell, where a hermit of old hath pray’d,Lift up its cross through the solemn shade;Or if some nook, where the wild flowers wave,Bear token sad of a mortal grave,--

Doubt not but there will our steps be stay’d,There our quick spirits awhile delay’d;There will thought fix our impatient eyes,And win back our hearts to their sympathies.

For what though the mountains and skies be fair,Steep’d in soft hues of the summer air?’Tis the soul of man, by its hopes and dreams,That lights up all nature with living gleams.

Where it hath suffer’d and nobly striven,Where it hath pour’d forth its vows to heaven;Where to repose it hath brightly pass’d,O’er this green earth there is glory cast.

And by that soul, midst groves and rills,And flocks that feed on a thousand hills,Birds of the forest, and flowers of the sod,We, only we, may be link’d to God!