The pipe of the Faun comes on their track
     And the weltering alleys overflow
     With musical shrieks and wind-wedded hair. 
     The riotous companies melt to a pair. 
     Bless them, mother of kindness!

     A star has nodded through
     The depths of the flying blue. 
     Time only to plant the light
     Of a memory in the blindness. 
     But time to show me the sight
     Of my life thro’ the curtain of night;
     Shining a moment, and mixed
     With the onward-hurrying stream,
     Whose pressure is darkness to me;
     Behind the curtain, fixed,
     Beams with endless beam
     That star on the changing sea.

     Great Mother Nature! teach me, like thee,
     To kiss the season and shun regrets. 
     And am I more than the mother who bore,
     Mock me not with thy harmony! 
     Teach me to blot regrets,
     Great Mother! me inspire
     With faith that forward sets
     But feeds the living fire,
     Faith that never frets
     For vagueness in the form. 
     In life, O keep me warm! 
     For, what is human grief? 
     And what do men desire? 
     Teach me to feel myself the tree,
     And not the withered leaf. 
     Fixed am I and await the dark to-be
     And O, green bounteous Earth! 
     Bacchante Mother! stern to those
     Who live not in thy heart of mirth;
     Death shall I shrink from, loving thee? 
     Into the breast that gives the rose,
     Shall I with shuddering fall?

     Earth, the mother of all,
     Moves on her stedfast way,
     Gathering, flinging, sowing. 
     Mortals, we live in her day,
     She in her children is growing.

     She can lead us, only she,
     Unto God’s footstool, whither she reaches: 
     Loved, enjoyed, her gifts must be,
     Reverenced the truths she teaches,
     Ere a man may hope that he
     Ever can attain the glee
     Of things without a destiny!

     She knows not loss: 
     She feels but her need,
     Who the winged seed
     With the leaf doth toss.

     And may not men to this attain? 
     That the joy of motion, the rapture of being,
     Shall throw strong light when our season is fleeing,
     Nor quicken aged blood in vain,
     At the gates of the vault, on the verge of the plain? 
     Life thoroughly lived is a fact in the brain,
     While eyes are left for seeing. 
     Behold, in yon stripped Autumn, shivering grey,
     Earth knows no desolation. 
     She smells regeneration
     In the moist breath of decay.

     Prophetic of the coming joy and strife,
     Like the wild western war-chief sinking
     Calm to the end he eyes unblinking,
     Her voice is jubilant in ebbing life.