'Heed the old oracles,

Ponder my spells ;

Song wakes in my pinnacles

When the wind swells.

Soundeth the prophetic wind,

The shadows. shake on the rock behind,
And the countless leaves of the pine are strings

Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.

Hearken! Hearken!

If thou wouldst know the mystic song
Chanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, abroad, the pæan swells;

O wise man! hear'st thou half it tells ?

O wise man! hear'st thou the least part

'Tis the chronicle of art.

To the open ear it sings

The early genesis of things,

Of tendency through endless ages,

Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages,

Of rounded worlds, of space and time,

Of the old flood's subsiding slime,

Of chemic matter, force, and form,

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm: The rushing metamorphosis,

Dissolving all that fixture is,

Melts things that be to things that seem,

And solid nature to a dream.

O, listen to the undersong

The ever old, the ever young;

And, far within those cadent pauses,

The chorus of the ancient Causes!

Delights the dreadful Destiny

To fling his voice into the tree,
And shock thy weak ear with a note
Breathed from the everlasting throat.
In music he repeats the pang

Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang.

O mortal! thy ears are stones;

These echoes are laden with tones
Which only the pure can hear;

Thou canst not catch what they recite

Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right,

Of man to come, of human life,

Of Death, and Fortune, Growth, and Strife.'

Once again the pine-tree sung:'Speak not thy speech my boughs among; Put off thy years, wash in the breeze; My hours are peaceful centuries.

Talk no more with feeble tongue;

No more the fool of space and time,

Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme.
Only thy Americans

Can read thy line, can meet thy glance,

But the runes that I rehearse

Understands the universe;

The least breath my boughs which tossed

Brings again the Pentecost,

To every soul it soundeth clear

In a voice of solemn cheer,

"Am I not thine? Are not these thine?"

And they reply, "Forever mine!"

My branches speak Italian,

English, German, Basque, Castilian,

Mountain speech to Highlanders,
Ocean tongues to islanders,

To Fin, and Lap, and swart Malay,

To each his bosom secret say.

Come learn with me the fatal song

Which knits the world in music strong,

Whereto every bosom dances,

Kindled with courageous fancies.

Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes,

Of things with things, of times with times,
Primal chimes of sun and shade,

Of sound and echo, man and maid,
The land reflected in the flood,
Body with shadow still pursued.

For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,

But it carves the bow of beauty there,

And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

The wood is wiser far than thou;

The wood and wave each other know.

Not unrelated, unaffied,

But to each thought and thing allied,
Is perfect Nature's every part,
Rooted in the mighty Heart.

But thou, poor child! unbound, unrhymed,
Whence camest thou, misplaced, mistimed?
Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded?
Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded?
Who thee divorced, deceived, and left?
Thee of thy faith who hath bereft,
And torn the ensigns from thy brow,
And sunk the immortal eye so low?
Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender,
Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender

For royal man; - they thee confess

An exile from the wilderness,

The hills where health with health agrees,

And the wise soul expels disease.

Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign

By which thy hurt thou may'st divine.