Challenge

the city; heard the ground
Echo with human thunder, and the sound
Go reeling down the streets and disappear.
The headlong hours, in their wild career,
Shouted and sang until the world was drowned
With babel-voices, each one more profound...
All day it surged--but nothing could I hear.

That night the country never seemed so still;
The trees and grasses spoke without a word
To stars that brushed them with their silver wings.
Together with the moon I climbed the hill,
And, in the very heart of Silence, heard
The speech and music of immortal things.

REVELATION

September--and an afternoon
Heavy with languid thoughts and long;
The air breathes faintly, half in swoon,
Like silence trembling after Song.
The mighty calmness seems to draw
My spirit through a painless birth--
And now, with eyes that never saw,
I see the poetry of earth.

That group of old maple-trees brooding in peace by the river, Happy w