beckoning Earth and voiced
     Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. 
     Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold
     The love that lends her grace
     Among the starry fold. 
     Then at new flood of customary morn,
     Look at her through her showers,
     Her mists, her streaming gold,
     A wonder edges the familiar face: 
     She wears no more that robe of printed hours;
     Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.

     Woodman and echo

     Close Echo hears the woodman’s axe,
     To double on it, as in glee,
     With clap of hands, and little lacks
     Of meaning in her repartee. 
     For all shall fall,
     As one has done,
     The tree of me,
     Of thee the tree;
     And unto all
     The fate we wait
     Reveals the wheels
     Whereon we run: 
     We tower to flower,
     We spread the shade,
     We drop for crop,
     At length are laid;
     Are rolled in mould,
     From chop and lop: 
     And are we thick in woodland tracks,
     Or tempting of our stature we,
     The end is one, we do but wax
     For service over land and sea. 
     So, strike! the like
     Shall thus of us,
     My brawny woodman, claim the tax. 
     Nor foe thy blow,
     Though wood be good,
     And shriekingly the timber cracks: 
     The ground we crowned
     Shall speed the seed
     Of younger into swelling sacks.

     For use he hews,
     To make awake
     The spirit of what stuff we be: 
     Our earth of mirth
     And tears he clears
     For braver, let our minds agree;
     And then will men
     Within them win
     An Echo clapping harmony.

     The wisdom of Eld

     We spend our lives in learning pilotage,
     And grow good steersmen when the vessel’s crank! 
     Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank
     Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. 
     It is the sentence which completes that stage;
     A testament of wisdom reading blank. 
     The seniors of the race, on their last plank,
     Pass mumbling it as nature’s final page. 
     These, bent by such experience, are the band
     Who captain young enthusiasts to maintain
     What things we view, and Earth’s decree withstand,
     Lest dreaded Change, long dammed by dull decay,
     Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain,
     And ancients musical at close of day.

     Earth’s preference

     Earth loves her young:  a preference manifest: 
     She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds;
     Their beauty with her choicest interthreads,
     And makes her revel of their merry zest;
     As in our East much were it in our West,
     If men had risen to do the work of heads.