Henry David Thoreau

Song Of Nature

Mine are the night and morning,

The pits of air, the gull of space,

The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,

The innumerable days.

 

I hide in the solar glory,

I am dumb in the pealing song,

I rest on the pitch of the torrent,

In slumber I am strong.

 

No numbers have counted my tallies,

No tribes my house can fill,

I sit by the shining Fount of Life

And pour the deluge still;

 

And ever by delicate powers

Gathering along the centuries

From race on race the rarest flowers,

My wreath shall nothing miss.

 

And many a thousand summers

My gardens ripened well,

And light from meliorating stars

With firmer glory fell.

 

I wrote the past in characters

Of rock and fire the scroll,

The building in the coral sea,

The planting of the coal.

 

And thefts from satellites and rings

And broken stars I drew,

And out of spent and aged things

I formed the world anew;

 

What time the gods kept carnival,

Tricked out in star and flower,

And in cramp elf and saurian forms

They swathed their too much power.