Hymn of Cheer, to Annie

Annie; very well I know
     That our world is rough and jagged,
     Thorny, rocky, rent and ragged;—
Stormy above and fits below—
But I’ve seen the columbine
     Very sweet and fragile, clinging
     To the thunder-cracks, and flinging
Odors sound it rare and fine!
And along the earthquake’s path,
     I have seen the wild rock-roses
     Redden the stone lips of fosses
To oblivion of its wrath.

Holy Nature, Mother fain,
     Holds us on her bosom, Annie!
     All the manifold and many
Children of her joy and pain!
Love, and love, and only love,
     Still she gives for all our doing,
     Rude or tender, chiding, wooing,—
Changeless calm as heaven above,
She is good, and goodly still
     Are the very pangs and tortures
     By which she would scourge and scorch us
From the tainture of our ill.

Annie, cold and rough and wide
     Are the forms and souls around thee,
     And there’s angled edges loomed[?] thee
With thy purest hope’s desire.
Be the Nymphea of the fen
     Be the wild-rose of the granite
     Listening the faint ind that face it
Paying back God’s love again[?].

To the ripening of the soul
     Gain and Loss – as sun and shado
     Lend oe greenness to the meadow,
Work to make our Being whole.
Though the fiends may lurk below
     God and angel bend above us,
     God and Angels watch and love us.
And these good by ours we know,
To the pure are all things pure
     To the worthiest all are worthy,
     Only earthlings find life earthy
Nature with our Truth grows truer.

Hasten not nor yet delay
     We have everlasting allies
     And the wine of our life’s chalice
Scapes praise ?? as of Forage
If the ?? rose on the Good[?]
     ?? wild havoc made in heaven
     Shone for us their flashing ??
Down their burning periods.
Serpents guile and ?? sin
     Pharoahs pride, the blood of Jesus
     Nero’s wrath, and Plato’s thesis,
Lift up to the heaven we in.

Slowly in the stellar years
     I’ve ?? bud and bloom ??
     Slowly ripen into holy.
Angel ?? through smiles and tears
Every everlasting joy thing
     Hath its roots in graves of ages
     Striking down the central ledges
To the throbbing God-heart’s spring
Diamond nature’s crystallize
     In the dark of pain and terror
     To flash out, some golden marrow!
To a grand and glad surprise!

Through the love of fair and free,
     IO the earth and sky and watesr,
     Angels call us, sons and daughters
Of the Eternal Joy to be,
Things of beauty are their lure,—
     Gleanings of the unseen glory
     Darted from heaven’s opening doorway—
Glimpses from its clear-obscure!
Keep them, Annie! Still and deep
     In the chamber of thy fancies,
     In thy weil’d hearts’ young romances,
In the dreams of day and sleep.

They are prophets, red-lipped seers
     Of the glory under darkness,
     Of the Life in dead-life’s starkness,
And the nursling bliss of tears—
Annie! Inward, upward look
     From thy walks of humble duty,
     And the Everlasting Beauty
Shall not miss thy lowly nook.
All its buds will grow and bloom
     All its misty, dim suggestions
     Will flash light upon Life’s questions,
Far beyond the very touch in June[??]