Warm noon brims full the valley’s cup, 5
    The aspen’s leaves are scarce astir;
    Only the little mill sends up
    Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

    Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems
    The road along the mill-pond’s brink, 10
    From ’neath the arching barberry-stems
    My footstep scares the shy chewink.

    Beneath a bony buttonwood
    The mill’s red door lets forth the din;
    The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 15
    Flits past the square of dark within.

    No mountain torrent’s strength is here;
    Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,
    Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 20
    And gently waits the miller’s will.

    Swift slips Undine along the race
    Unheard, and then, with flashing bound,
    Floods the dull wheel with light and grace,
    And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.

    The miller dreams not at what cost, 25
    The quivering millstones hum and whirl,
    Nor how for every turn are tost
    Armfuls of diamond and of pearl.

    But Summer cleared my happier eyes
    With drops of some celestial juice, 30
    To see how Beauty underlies,
    Forevermore each form of use.

    And more; methought I saw that flood,
    Which now so dull and darkling steals,
    Thick, here and there, with human blood, 35
    To turn the world’s laborious wheels.

    No more than doth the miller there,
    Shut in our several cells, do we
    Know with what waste of beauty rare
    Moves every day’s machinery. 40

    Surely the wiser time shall come
    When this fine overplus of might,
    No longer sullen, slow, and dumb,
    Shall leap to music and to light.

    In that new childhood of the Earth 45
    Life of itself shall dance and play,
    Fresh blood in Time’s shrunk veins make mirth,
    And labor meet delight half-way.—­

THE PRESENT CRISIS

    When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast
    Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
    And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
    To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
    Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. 5

    Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,
    When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems to and fro;
    At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
    Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,
    And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future’s heart. 10