More strong than thunder’s rending stroke
Is sunshine that upbuilds the oak,
That lifts the cedar’s arm on high,
Kindles the violet’s tender eye,
And o’er wide regions, frozen long,
Wakes clay to life, and life to song!
The noiseless, everlasting heat
Of lightning’s cool, invisible feet,
Stirs every living leaf and bud
With pulses of a stainless blood;
And only in some brief revolt,
When reek invites the crashing bolt,
It turns, and down the riven sky
Hurls the loud anger of its cry;
But, by a million lives confessed,
Its mute empire is mightiest!
Fresh dews that shine in grass and flower
Exceed the roaring storm in power,
Even as in beauty,—that yet lives
In the new forms their beauty gives.
Niagara, for grandeur, awes
The trembling soul its thunder draws
To look upon that headlong leap,
And hear the shout of deep to deep;
But the wide hush of April rain,
Rustling with Autumn’s golden grain,
And gleaming, where the sun melts through,
With every bloom’s predictive hue
A mightier force reveals in act
Than all the plunging cataract.
The jar of action, and the noise,
Are but the engine’s lack of poise,
That sooner into ruin reels
For weight of its uncentered wheels.
Majestic billows of the main
Roll murmurous o’er their central plain,
And only on some abject shore
Are weakened into rage and roar.
If the far fires that warm our globe,—
Waft of the sun-god’s flaming robe,—
Shoot disma thunders down his sky,
Deep in their natal gulfs they die,
And only the serene, pure light
Comes with its flood of silent night.
Oh, balanced like a whirling star
The all-untiring forces are,
Enveloped, in their vast career,
With their own silent atmosphere,—
A faith, that, in its calmness great,
Seems the self-consciousness of Fate,
And that unconquerable Will
Which, mastering all, is swift and still,
Sweeping the sword-arm’s mighty curves
From a firm point that never swerves!
Ah, then, possess thy soul in peace
Thou Builder for the centuries!
Since all our mightiest forces run
Still and resistless as the sun.
