Oh, benediction of the higher mood 320
And human-kindness of the lower! for both
I will be grateful while I live, nor question
The wisdom that hath made us what we are,
With such large range as from the ale-house bench
Can reach the stars and be with both at home. 
They tell us we have fallen on prosy days,
Condemned to glean the leavings of earth’s feast
Where gods and heroes took delight of old;
But though our lives, moving in one dull round
Of repetition infinite, become 330
Stale as a newspaper once read, and though
History herself, seen in her workshop, seem
To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes,
Rich with memorial shapes of saint and sage,
That pave with splendor the Past’s dusky aisles,—­
Panes that enchant the light of common day
With colors costly as the blood of kings,
Till with ideal hues it edge our thought,—­
Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts,
And man the best of nature, there shall be 340
Somewhere contentment for these human hearts,
Some freshness, some unused material
For wonder and for song.  I lose myself
In other ways where solemn guide-posts say,
This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose,
But here, here only, I am ne’er betrayed,
For every by-path leads me to my love.

God’s passionless reformers, influences,
That purify and heal and are not seen,
Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how 350
Ye make medicinal the wayside weed? 
I know that sunshine, through whatever rift,
How shaped it matters not, upon my walls
Paints discs as perfect-rounded as its source,
And, like its antitype, the ray divine,
However finding entrance, perfect still,
Repeats the image unimpaired of God.

We, who by shipwreck only find the shores
Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at first;
Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, 360
That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps,
The shock and sustenance of solid earth;
Inland afar we see what temples gleam
Through immemorial stems of sacred groves,
And we conjecture shining shapes therein;
Yet for a space we love to wander here
Among the shells and seaweed of the beach.

So mused I once within my willow-tent
One brave June morning, when the bluff northwest,
Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day 370
That made us bitter at our neighbors’ sins,
Brimmed the great cup of heaven with sparkling cheer
And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles,
Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue,
Living and lustrous as a woman’s eyes
Look once and look no more, with southward curve
Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen’s hair
Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold;
From blossom-clouded orchards, far away
The bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows flowed