Nature, the gentlest mother

I.

Nature, the gentlest mother,

Impatient of no child,

The feeblest or the waywardest,—

Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill

By traveller is heard,

Restraining rampant squirrel

Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,

A summer afternoon,—

Her household, her assembly;

And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles

Incites the timid prayer

Of the minutest cricket,

The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep

She turns as long away

As will suffice to light her lamps;

Then, bending from the sky,

With infinite affection

And infiniter care,

Her golden finger on her lip,

Wills silence everywhere.

Spring in Lander, Wyoming.

 

The wind begun to rock the grass

XXXVII

The wind begun to rock the grass

With threatening tunes and low,—

He flung a menace at the earth,

A menace at the sky.

The leaves unhooked themselves from trees

And started all abroad;

The dust did scoop itself like hands

And throw away the road.

The wagons quickened on the streets,

The thunder hurried slow;

The lightning showed a yellow beak,

And then a livid claw.

The birds put up the bars to nests,

The cattle fled to barns;

There came one drop of giant rain,

And then, as if the hands

That held the dams had parted hold,

The waters wrecked the sky,

But overlooked my father’s house,

Just quartering a tree.

Wind River Peak, taken from "Johnny-Behind-the-Rocks," near Lander, WY.