Page:Poems Jackson.djvu/129

And spread like banners; green, so green it burned,
And lit the air like red; and blue which yearned
From all the lofty dome of sky, and bent
And folded low and circling like a tent;

And forests ranged like armies, round and round,
At feet of mountains of eternal snow;
And valleys all alive with happy sound;
The song of birds; swift brooks' delicious flow;
The mystic hum of million things that grow;
The stir of men; and gladdening every way,
Voices of little children at their play;

And shining banks of flowers which words refuse
To paint; such colors as in summer light
The rarest, fleetest summer rainbows use,
But set in gold of sun, and silver white
Of dew, as thick as gems which blind the sight
On altar fronts, inlaid with priceless things,
The jewelled gifts of centuries of kings.

Then, sitting half in dream, and half in fear
Of how such wondrous miracle were wrought,
Thy name, dear friend, I sudden seemed to hear
Through all the charmed air.
Through all the charmed air.My loving thought
Through patient years had vainly groped and sought,
And found no hidden thing so rare, so good,
That it might furnish thy similitude.

O noble soul, whose strengths like mountains stand,
Whose purposes, like adamantine stone,