Henry David Thoreau

Song Of Nature

Time and Thought were my surveyors,

They laid their courses well,

They boiled the sea, and piled the layers

Of granite, marl and shell.

 

But he, the man-child glorious, -

Where tarries he the while?

The rainbow shines his harbinger,

The sunset gleams his smile.

 

My boreal lights leap upward,

Forthright my planets roll,

And still the man-child is not born,

The summit of the whole.

 

Must time and tide forever run?

Will never my winds go sleep in the west?

Will never my wheels which whirl the sun

And satellites have rest?

 

Too much of donning and doffing,

Too slow the rainbow fades,

I weary of my robe of snow,

My leaves and my cascades;

 

I tire of globes and races,

Too long the game is played;

What without him is summer's pomp,

Or winter's frozen shade?

 

I travail in pain for him,

My creatures travail and wait;

His couriers come by squadrons,

He comes not to the gate.