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nothing left down to the smallest atom which was not a winged spirit instinct with life.

Who shall understand the words of the ferns lifting their fronds innumerable?

What man shall go forth into the world, holding his life in his open palm

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With high adventurous joy from sunrise to sunset

Fearless, in his sleeve laughing, having outflanked his enemies?

His heart like Nature's garden

abide in

that all men

Free, where the great winds blow, rains fall, and the sun shines,

And manifold growths come forth and scatter their fragrance?

Who shall be like a grave, where men may bury Sin and sorrow and shame, to rise in the new

day

Glorious out of their grave? who, deeply listening,

Shall hear through his soul the voices of all creation,

Voices of mountain and star, voices of all men, Softly, audibly raining? — shall seize and fix

them,

Rivet them fast with love, no

them?

more to lose

Who shall be that spirit of deep fulfilment, Himself, self-centred? yet evermore from that

centre

Over the world expanding, along all creatures Loyally passing with love, in perfect equality?

Him immortality crowns. In him all sorrow

And mortal passion of death shall pass from creation.

They who sit by the road and are weary shall rise up

As he passes. They who despair shall arise.

Who shall understand the words of the ferns winnowing the air?

Death shall change as the light in the morning changes;

Death shall change as the light 'twixt moon

set and dawn.

Edward Carpenter

I

I HEARD THE VOICE OF THE WOODS

HEARD the voice of the woods and of the

grass growing silently and of the delicate bending ferns,

And it said:

For the dumb and for the generations of them that have no voice my speech is

For them too help comes.

I am the spirit of the Earth.

Round me the woods and mountains roll, rising and falling to the far sea;

In the hollow below me roars the great river to its doom;

The clouds draw onward; and the voices of the generations of men are woven like thin gossamer through the air about me.

Yet here where I am there is

peace

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such as

mortal yet on earth hath hardly known, But which shall be known, and even now is

known.

Where the stems stand dividing the winnowed sunlight,

Where the green floor is dappled with soft warm moss, and the swift hum of the bee is heard, And the air glides through like a gracious spirit inbreathing beauty,

I walk - meditating the voiceless children, drawing them to myself with deep unearthly love.

Come unto me, O yearning and inarticulate (for whom so many ages I have waited), Breathing your lives out like a long unuttered prayer,

Come unto me: and I will give you rest.

For I am not the woods nor the grass nor the bending ferns;

Nor any pale moonlight spirit of these;

And I am not the air;

Nor the light multitudinous life therein;
Nor the sun and its radiant warmth;

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But I am one who include — and am greater – One (out of thousands) who hold all these, embosomed,

Safe in my heart: fear not.

In your eyes deep-looking I will touch you so as to be free from all pain;

Where the last interpretations are, in the uttermost recesses, I will reach you;

Utterance at length shall your pent-up spirit have, To pour out all that is in you to speak and be not afraid.

Dear brother, listen!

I am no shadow, no fickle verse-maker's fiction, Many are the words which are not spoken, but here there is speech;

Many are the words which are not spoken, but in due time all shall be spoken:

There is neither haste nor delay, but all shall be spoken.

Come up into the fragrant woods and walk with

me.

The voices of the trees and the silent-growing grass and waving ferns ascend;

Beyond the birth-and-death veil of the seasons they ascend and are born again;

The voices of the trees and the silent-growing cry of the heart-they too ascend into new perpetual birth.

All is interpreted anew:

In man the cataracts descend, and the winds blow, and autumn reddens and ripens;

And in the woods a spirit walks which is not wholly of the woods,

But which looks out over the wide Earth and draws to itself all men with deep unearthly love.

Come, walk with me:

On the soft moss- - though you guess not my arm is about you

By the white stems where the gracious air is breathing,

On the green floor, through the pale green winnowed sunlight,

Walk and leave all to me.

Edward Carpenter

O DREAMY, GLOOMY, FRIENDLY TREES!

DREAMY, gloomy, friendly trees,

I came along your narrow track

To bring my gifts unto your knees
And gifts did you give back;

For when I brought this heart that burns
These thoughts that bitterly repine-
And laid them here among the ferns
And the hum of boughs divine,

Ye, vastest breathers of the air,

Shook down with slow and mighty poise Your coolness on the human care,

Your wonder on its toys,

Your greenness on the heart's despair,
Your darkness on its noise.

Herbert Trench

WILL

CHORUS

FROM The Bacchae

ILL they ever come to me, ever again,
The long long dances,

On through the dark till the dim stars wane?
Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the

stream

Of wind in my hair? Shall our white feet gleam

In the dim expanses?

Oh, feet of a fawn to the greenwood fled,
Alone in the grass and the loveliness;
Leap of the hunted, no more in dread,

Beyond the snares and the deadly press:
Yet a voice still in the distance sounds,
A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds;

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