| |
| HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill, | |
| And, minuting the long day’s loss, | |
| The cedar’s shadow, slow and still, | |
| Creeps o’er its dial of gray moss. | |
| |
| Warm noon brims full the valley’s cup. | 5 |
| The aspen’s leaves are scarce astir; | |
| Only the little mill sends up | |
| Its busy, never-ceasing burr. | |
| |
| Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems | |
| The road along the mill-pond’s brink, | 10 |
| From ’neath the arching barberry-stems, | |
| My footstep scares the shy chewink. | |
| |
| Beneath a bony buttonwood | |
| The mill’s red door lets forth the din; | |
| The whitened miller, dust-imbued, | 15 |
| Flits past the square of dark within. | |
| |
| No mountain torrent’s strength is here; | |
| Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, | |
| Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, | |
| And gently waits the miller’s will. | 20 |
| |
| Swift slips Undine along the race | |
| Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, | |
| Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, | |
| And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. | |
| |
| The miller dreams not at what cost | 25 |
| The quivering millstones hum and whirl, | |
| Nor how for every turn are tost | |
| Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. | |
| |
| But Summer cleared my happier eyes | |
| With drops of some celestial juice, | 30 |
| To see how Beauty underlies | |
| Forevermore each form of Use. | |
| |
| And more: methought I saw that flood, | |
| Which now so dull and darkling steals, | |
| Thick, here and there, with human blood, | 35 |
| To turn the world’s laborious wheels. | |
| |
| No more than doth the miller there, | |
| Shut in our several cells, do we | |
| Know with what waste of beauty rare | |
| Moves every day’s machinery. | 40 |
| |
| Surely the wiser time shall come | |
| When this fine overplus of might, | |
| No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, | |
| Shall leap to music and to light. | |
| |
| In that new childhood of the Earth | 45 |
| Life of itself shall dance and play, | |
| Fresh blood in Time’s shrunk veins make mirth, | |
| And labor meet delight half-way. | |
| |
