Poems (Storrie)/Live Close to Nature
Live Close to nature.
Live close to Nature, lean thou on her breast, She hath repayment, she hath help and rest. Thy day so poor, so meagre planned by fate, Take it to her and she will compensate, Stores deep and vast That will outlastThe heaviest drain thy famine need can make She hath, and in her fulness thou thy thirst can'st shake.
This loud incessant clamour in thine ears,Life's myriad voices, laughter, shrieks, and tears Drown them in her sweet silence, steep thy soul In those rich spaces where the planets roll Their rhythmic swing Unfalterin From æon unto æon, while they fill The populous vault with silence thou too can'st be still.
Live close to Nature; when thy sudden thought All shuddering pauses, knowing thou art nought A breath—a vapour, when the warm live "me"So late rejoicing, sees Eternity Full-face, A breathing space, And falters, when thou can'st not think of God, Think on the dear familiar earth His Mediator trod.
For thy poor heart was never meant to roam In such cold altitudes, this is its home Till, as a chrysalis bursts from its sheath And wins its wings, thou shalt some day through death Rise With franchise To larger spheres, but now for sanity Live close to Nature. She was made for thee
And fits thy needs. Bethink thee, with the curse Humanity was given this tender nurse, This bountiful great mother-heart that knows Of healing, in whose ample veins there flows Triumphant still The Omnipotent will That woke creation, and with vital force Renews the springs of being ever at their source.
Leave thou thy cities and their devious ways, That do but sear thy thought and warp thy days In endless coils of custom, empty! vain! A seed of folly bearing sheaves of pain. Seek thou no more The world's false lore, But read this mighty volume writ for thee In royal characters on the impassioned sea,
On snow-capped mountains parleying with the sun, On dappled meadows where quick shadows run, On palmy isles in living azure set, On the moist bosom of a violet, Look Where a brook Slips into dimpled rest in some lagoon, And smiles a sleepy silver smile unto the moon.
Or linger where the moss is softly spread In quiet dells, the green towers overhead Agog with secrets, rumours of a breeze Of buds unsheathing, nesting mysteries, And poised as light As Saturn's might A harebell swinging on its slender stem, Think on these revelations, deeply ponder them
They are not set for nought before thine eyes, They are not hieroglyphics which the wise Can scarce decipher—they have meanings clear That whoso will, may understand and hear, They are for thee,Assuredly, Soul primers—God in part made manifest Some other way, some other day, He will reveal the rest.