THE ANNOYER. "Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever." SHELLEY. LOVE knoweth every form of air, Like song in the time of birds. He peeps into the warrior's heart From the tip of a stooping plume, And the serried spears, and the many men He'll come to his tent in the weary night, And be busy in his dream; And he'll float to his eye in morning light Like a fay on a silver beam. He hears the sound of the hunter's gun, And sighs in his ear like a stirring leaf, And flits in his woodland track. The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river The cloud, and the open sky He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver, Like the light of your very eye. The fisher hangs over the leaning boat, And ponders the silver sea, For Love is under the surface hid, And a spell of thought has he, He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet, Till the bait is gone from the crafty line, He blurs the print of the scholar's book, And profanes the cell of the holy man, In the darkest night, and the bright daylight, In earth, and sea, and sky, In every home of human thought, Will Love be lurking nigh. ROARING BROOK. (A PASSAGE OF SCENERY IN CONNECTICUT.) It was a mountain stream that with the leap As anger with a gentle word grows calm. In spring-time, when the snows were coming down, And in the flooding of the Autumn rains, No foot might enter there-but in the hot And thirsty summer, when the fountains slept, You could go up its channel in the shade, To the far sources, with a brow as cool Here when an idle student have I come, Of water to my spell-bewilder'd ear Seem'd like the din of some gay tournament. Pleasant have been such hours, and tho' the wise Have said that I was indolent, and they Who taught me have reprov'd me that I play'd The truant in the leafy month of June, I deem it true philosophy in him Whose path is in the rude and busy world, To loiter with these wayside comforters. |