O Beautiful, Awful Summer Day, What Hast

The Human Voice Is The Organ Of The Soul.

Each New Epoch In Life Seems An Encounter. There Is A Tussle And A Cloud Of Dust, And We Come Out Of It Triumphant Or Crest-fallen, According As We Have Borne Ourselves.

It Is The Harvest Moon! On Gilded Vanes And Roofs Of Villages, On Woodland Crests And Their Aerial Neighborhoods Of Nests Deserted, On The Curtained Window-panes Of Rooms Where Children Sleep, On Country Lanes And Harvest-fields, Its Mystic Splendor Rests.

Love Contending With Friendship, And Self With Each Generous Impulse. To And Fro In His Breast His Thoughts Were Heaving And Dashing, As In A Foundering Ship.

How Absolute And Omnipotent Is The Silence Of Night! And Yet The Stillness Seems Almost Audible! From All The Measureless Depths Of Air Around Us Comes A Half-sound, A Half-whisper, As If We Could Hear The Crumbling And Falling Away Of Earth And All Created Things, In The Great Miracle Of Nature, Decay And Reproduction, Ever Beginning, Never Ending,--the Gradual Lapse And Running Of The Sand In The Great Hour-glass Of Time.