OCR Text |
Show !:; SANCTUARY. (Edgar Fawcett, In Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly for Julv.i Come, love, while the light is yet lowly and lazy O'er languors of evening's red glooms; While stili the pale disc of each delicate daisy Has died not from pastures it plumes. Come, hear the large boughs of the sycamores syca-mores quiver With breeze that the sunset has brought. And watch how the reeds by the rims of the river To luminous ripples are wrought. Great Nature has girt us with spells like the greeting: Of arms that allure and enwreathe. Her bracks in their flowing, her winds in their fleeting. Have grown like the breaths that we breathe. She sis-hs, and we sadden: she laughs, and we brighten; Her gay. moods or sombre we share; Our hope to the reach of her rainbow can heighten, Or turn, with her tears, to despair. She charms, yet she chides us; denies, yet endows us; And brews for us bitter with sweet; Yet never by tawdry pretension o'erbrows us. Nor stings us by stealthy deceit. Her gifts to no casts or preferment she panders; Divine her dfmocracy stavs: In sequences kinned with magnificent candors We search all her deeds and her days. At last have we changed for these pageants of cloudland The po.np that from falsity flows. At last have we bartered the loud land, the proud land. For bournes of relief and repose. Come, love, while the lijrht is yet lazy and lowly, - Ere starshine the rich blue has cleft; Come, learn from great Nature how lofty and holy She looms o'er the life we have left! |