O gift of God! O perfect day:
Whereon shall no man work, but play;
Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be!
Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.
I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
And over me unrolls on high
The splendid scenery of the sky,
Where through a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon,
Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts
Its craggy summits white with drifts.
Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!
Blow, winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!
O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?
Birds of Passage 1863
- Birds of Passage
- Prometheus, or the Poet's Forethought
- Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought
- The Ladder of St. Augustine
- The Phantom Ship
- The Warden of the Cinque Ports
- Haunted Houses
- In the Churchyard at Cambridge
- The Emperor's Bird's-Nest
- The Two Angels
- Daylight and Moonlight
- The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
- Oliver Basselin
- Victor Galbraith
- My Lost Youth
- The Ropewalk
- The Golden Mile-Stone
- Catawba Wine
- Santa Filomena
- The Discoverer of the North Cape
- Daybreak
- The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz
- Children
- Sandalphon
- The Children's Hour
- Enceladus
- The Cumberland
- Snow-Flakes
- A Day of Sunshine
- Something Left Undone
- Weariness