Classic Poem

I STAND beside the stream,
Whose ripples with the beam
Of morning's Orient splendor shine and flow;
I hear the low, sweet plash,
And watch the small waves dash
Against the banks, on which long grasses grow.

Without a cloud, the sky
Sheds from its calm on high
A benediction on the simple scene;
Across the pasture wide
You see the slow stream glide,
And just beyond the wood's thick garb of green.

A peace past word or thought
Its subtle charm has wrought
On distant cornfields bending in the breeze;
It sounds in the bird's song,
It sways in waves along
The yellow wheat that girds the laborers' knees.

Here, in the open field,
The floods of sunshine yield
A sense of some reality that fills,
With waves on waves of light,
Transcending human sight,
All life that dumbly breathes, or conscious thrills.

Far off, within the wood,
Starring its solitude,
Swift gleams of bickering radiance flash and fade;
The light, through close-meshed leaves,
Its vagrant beauty weaves
Across the stream that waters wood and glade.

And now the risen sun,
Its lofty station won,
Floods with its glory the horizon's bound;
The wild-flowers bend and laugh,
The birds more gayly quaff
The waters murmuring on with stilly sound.

I cannot tell what joy
Gives all my thoughts employ,
And opens to my soul sweet fields unseen;
As though the shrouding veil
That wraps earth's painful tale
Had drawn aside its thickly-woven screen.

I see, O sun! I see
The open mystery
Of life and time thine opulence makes more clear;
O type of that deep peace
That from its high release
Floods with itself this world of grief and fear!