Under a spreading chestnut-tree

The village smithy stands;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long;

His face is like the tan;

His brow is wet with honest sweat;

He earns whate’er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,

For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn to night,

You can hear his bellows blow;

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,

With measured beat and slow,

Like a sexton ringing the village bell

When the evening sun is low.

And children, coming home from school,

Look in at the open door;

They love to see the flaming forge,

And hear the bellows roar,

And catch the burning sparks that fly

Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,

And sits among his boys;

He hears the parson pray and preach,

He hears his daughter’s voice

Singing in the village choir,

And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,

Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more—

How in the grave she lies;

And, with his hard, rough hand, he wipes

A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,

Onward through life he goes;

Each morning sees some task begin,

Each evening sees its close;

Something attempted, something done,

Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life,

Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus, on its sounding anvil, shaped

Each burning deed and thought!

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,

As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,

From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no Minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concenter’d all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

They say that God lives very high:

But if you look above the pines

You cannot see God. And why?

And if you dig down in the mines

You never see him in the gold,

Though, from him, all that’s glory shines.

God is so good, he wears a fold

Of heaven and earth across his face—

Like secrets kept for love untold.

But still I feel that his embrace

Slides down by thrills, through all things made,

Through sight and sound of every place:

As if my tender mother laid

On my shut lids her kisses’ pressure,

Half waking me at night; and said,

“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?”

Am I a king that I should call my own

This splendid ebon throne?

Or by what reason or what right divine,

Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song

It may to me belong:

Only because the spreading chestnut tree

Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,

When in the summer time

The affluent foliage of its branches made

A cavern of cool shade.

There by the blacksmith’s forge, beside the street,

Its blossoms white and sweet

Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,

And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,

Tossed its great arms about,

The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,

Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its branches bare,

Shaped as a stately chair,

Have, by a hearth-stone found a home at last,

And whisper of the past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride

Repel the ocean tide.

But, seated in this chair,

I can in rhyme

Roll back the tide of time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,

The blossoms and the bees,

And hear the children’s voices call,

And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglow,

I hear the bellows blow,

And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat

The iron white with heat.

And thus, dear children, have ye made for me

This day a jubilee,

And to my more than three-score years and ten

Brought back my youth again.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind

And in it are enshrined

The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought

The giver’s loving thought.

Only your love and your remembrance could

Give life to this dead wood,

And make these branches, leafless now so long,

Blossom again in song.

Sing, children, sing,

And the lily censers swing;

Sing that life and joy are waking and that

Death no more is king.

Sing the happy, happy tumult of the slowly bright’ning Spring;

Sing, little children, sing,

Sing, children, sing,

Winter wild has taken wing.

Fill the air with the sweet tidings till the frosty echoes ring.

Along the eaves, the icicles no longer cling;

And the crocus in the garden lifts its bright face to the sun;

And in the meadow, softly the brooks begin to run;

And the golden catkins, swing

In the warm air of the Spring—

Sing, little children, sing.

Sing, children, sing,

The lilies white you bring

In the joyous Easter morning, for hopes are blossoming,

And as earth her shroud of snow from off her breast doth fling,

So may we cast our fetters off in God’s eternal Spring;

So may we find release at last from sorrow and from pain,

Soon may we find our childhood’s calm, delicious dawn again.

Sweet are your eyes, O little ones, that look with smiling grace,

Without a shade of doubt or fear into the future’s face.

Sing, sing in happy chorus, with happy voices tell

That death is life, and God is good, and all things shall be well.

That bitter day shall cease

In warmth and light and peace,

That winter yields to Spring—

Sing, little children, sing.

I ride on the mountain tops, I ride;

I have found my life and am satisfied.

Onward I ride in the blowing oats,

Checking the field lark’s rippling notes—

Lightly I sweep from steep to steep;

O’er my head through branches high

Come glimpses of deep blue sky;

The tall oats brush my horse’s flanks:

Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks;

A bee booms out of the scented grass;

A jay laughs with me as I pass.

I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget

Life’s hoard of regret—

All the terror and pain of a chafing chain.Grind on, O cities, grind! I leave you a blur behind.

I am lifted elate—the skies expand;

Here the world’s heaped gold is a pile of sand.

Let them weary and work in their narrow walls;

I ride with the voices of waterfalls.

I swing on as one in a dream—I swing.

Down the very hollows, I shout, I sing.

The world is gone like an empty word;

My body’s a bough in the wind,—my heart a bird.

Its O my heart, my heart,

To be out in the sun and sing,

To sing and shout in the fields about,

In the balm and blossoming.

Sing loud, O bird in the tree;

O bird, sing loud in the sky,

And honey-bees, blacken the clover-beds;

There are none of you as glad as I.

The leaves laugh low in the wind,

Laugh low with the wind at play;

And the odorous call of the flowers all

Entices my soul away.

For oh, but the world is fair, is fair,

And oh, but the world is sweet;

I will out in the old of the blossoming mould,

And sit at the Master’s feet.

And the love my heart would speak,

I will fold in the lily’s rim,

That the lips of the blossom more pure and meek

May offer it up to Him.

Then sing in the hedgerow green, O thrush,

O skylark, sing in the blue;

Sing loud, sing clear, that the King may hear,

And my soul shall sing with you.

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,

One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,

When he called the flowers so blue and golden

Stars that in earth’s firmament do shine.

Stars they are wherein we read our history,

As astrologers and seers of eld;

Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery,

Like the burning stars that they beheld.

Wondrous truths and manifold as wondrous,

God hath written in those stars above;

But not less in the bright flowerets under us

Stands the revelation of His love.

Bright and glorious is that revelation,

Written all over this great world of ours

Making evident our own creation,

In these stars of earth, these golden flowers.

And the poet, faithful and far-seeing,

Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part

Of the selfsame universal Being,

Which is throbbing in his brain and heart.

Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,

Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,

Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining;

Buds that open only to decay;

Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues,

Flaunting gaily in the golden light;

Large desires with most uncertain issues,

Tender wishes blossoming at night.

These in flowers and men are more than seeming,

Workings are they of the selfsame powers,

Which the poet, in no idle dreaming,

Seeth in himself and in the flowers.

Everywhere about us are they glowing,

Some like stars to tell us Spring is born:

Others, their blue eyes with tears o’erflowing,

Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn.

Not alone in Spring’s armorial bearing,

And in summer’s green-emblazoned field,

But in arms of brave old Autumn’s wearing,

In the center of his blazoned shield.

Not alone in meadows and green alleys

On the mountaintop and by the brink

Of sequestered pool in woodland valleys,

Where the slaves of nature stoop to drink;

Not alone in her vast dome of glory,

Not on graves of birds or beasts alone,

But in old cathedrals, high and hoary,

On the tombs of heroes carved in stone;

In the cottage of the rudest peasant,

In ancestral homes whose crumbling towers,

Speaking of the Past unto the Present,

Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers.

In all places, then, and in all seasons,

Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings;

Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,

How akin they are to human things.

And with childlike, credulous affection

We behold their tender buds expand;

Emblems of our own great resurrection,

Emblems of the bright and better land.

Sweet, sweet, sweet! Oh, happy that I am!

(Listen to the meadow-larks, across the fields that sing!)

Sweet, sweet, sweet! O subtle breath of balm,

O winds that blow, O buds that grow, O rapture of the spring!

Sweet, sweet, sweet! O skies, serene and blue,

That shut the velvet pastures in, that fold the mountain’s crest!

Sweet, sweet, sweet! What of the clouds ye knew?

The vessels ride a golden tide, upon a sea at rest.

Sweet, sweet, sweet! Who prates of care and pain?

Who says that life is sorrowful? O life so glad, so fleet!

Ah! he who lives the noblest life finds life the noblest gain,

The tears of pain a tender rain to make its waters sweet.

Sweet, sweet, sweet! O happy world that is!

Dear heart, I hear across the fields my mateling pipe and call

Sweet, sweet, sweet! O world so full of bliss,

For life is love, the world is love, and love is over all!

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

It was fifty years ago,

In the pleasant month of May,

In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,

A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee,

Saying: “Here is a story-book

Thy Father has written for thee.”

“Come, wander with me,” she said,

“Into regions yet untrod;

And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God.”

And he wandered away and away

With Nature, the dear old nurse,

Who sang to him night and day

The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long,

Or his heart began to fail,

She would sing a more wonderful song,

Or tell a more marvelous tale.

So she keeps him still a child,

And will not let him go,

Though at times his heart beats wild

For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;

Though at times he hears in his dreams

The Ranz des Vaches of old,

And the rush of mountain streams

From glaciers clear and cold;

And the mother at home says, “Hark!

For his voice I listen and yearn;

It is growing late and dark,

And my boy does not return!”