RECUPERATING IN NATURE’S SANITARIUM
Disconsolate friend, if truly sore-distressed thou art by care and pain,
Plunge, then, with me into the deep, continuous woods.
Health there, and hope, to thee will come again;
Untroubled there we both may well indulge our favorite, loftier moods.
Remote,—afar from dust and din of crowded cities,—
By waters cool, how sweet! how delectable! to spend one’s leisure time!
To listening hills, I there will croon my artless ditties
And shout, aye, loudly shout “heroics!” in Nature’s halls sublime.
Near by yon crystal mountain lake,
Hemmed in by cliff and sylvan wide,
My hunter’s home I there would gladly make;
There happy, as the famed “Tuck friar,” in the forest glade reside.
In other days,—with saddle horse and pack!
(Permit me, please, to trace my earlier rambles back!)
When “whipping for trout” the rippled mountain streams,
Or “prospecting,” perchance, for that yellow dross that gleams
Ever brightly in man’s waking dreams.
Again, with Hope, I scale the lofty, snow-capped peak,
Again, with Joy, I cross vast plateaus wild and bleak,
Once more a thirst for water on hot desert plains,
Or else, half-drowned, I camp out in the rains!
’Mongst pleasing memories thus, learn, oh, learn to live thy summers o’er and o’er;
Again to stand exulting on the storm-lashed shore.
Dear heart! thy Great Creator’s joy is largely thine;
No want he made but gave food to supply.
This is a universal law divine;
The very wish thou hast to gain immortality,
Is strongest proof that “thou shalt not surely die.”
Thus idling, grudge not, yet, to spend some precious hours;
Oh, kindly still sit here with me and muse among the flowers.
Behold! deep in the spacious hollow of yon evening sky
Afar,—almost beyond the reach of mortal’s ken,—
How brightly there His clustering islands lie,
How sweet the hope, there, after death, to live again!
To thee—to me—what is the flight of time?
Count not as lost the fleeting hours we squander here in contemplations thus.
In those star-worlds, whose light-beams bridge o’er space,
Read there God’s covenants sublime:
Eternity! eternity! was made for us!