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Title: Easter Eve
Author: Bliss Carman [
More Titles by Carman]
If I should tell you I saw Pan lately down by the shallows of Silvermine,
Blowing an air on his pipe of willow, just as the moon began to shine;
Or say that, coming from town on Wednesday, I met Christ walking in Ponus Street;
You might remark, "Our friend is flighty! Visions, for want of enough red meat!"
Then let me ask you. Last December, when there was skating on Wampanaw,
Among the weeds and sticks and grasses under the hard black ice I saw
An old mud-turtle poking about, as if he were putting his house to rights,
Stiff with the cold perhaps, yet knowing enough to prepare for the winter nights.
And here he is on a log this morning, sunning himself as calm as you please.
But I want to know, when the lock of winter was sprung of a sudden, who kept the keys?
Who told old nibbler to go to sleep safe and sound with the lily roots,
And then in the first warm days of April--out to the sun with the greening shoots?
By night a flock of geese went over, honking north on the trails of air,
The spring express--but who despatched it, equipped with speed and cunning care?
Hark to our bluebird down in the orchard trolling his chant of the happy heart,
As full of light as a theme of Mozart's--but where did he learn that more than art?
Where the river winds through grassy meadows, as sure as the south wind brings the rain,
Sounding his reedy note in the alders, the redwing comes back to his nest again.
Are these not miracles? Prompt you answer: "Merely the prose of natural fact;
Nothing but instinct plain and patent, born in the creatures, that bids them act."
Well, I have an instinct as fine and valid, surely, as that of the beasts and birds,
Concerning death and the life immortal, too deep for logic, too vague for words.
No trace of beauty can pass or perish, but other beauty is somewhere born;
No seed of truth or good be planted, but the yield must grow as the growing corn.
Therefore this ardent mind and spirit I give to the glowing days of earth.
To be wrought by the Lord of life to something of lasting import and lovely worth.
If the toil I give be without self-seeking, bestowed to the limit of will and power,
To fashion after some form ideal the instant task and the waiting hour,
It matters not though defeat undo me, though faults betray me and sorrows scar,
Already I share the life eternal with the April buds and the evening star.
The slim new moon is my sister now; the rain, my brother; the wind, my friend.
Is it not well with these forever? Can the soul of man fare ill in the end?
[The end]
Bliss Carman's poem: Easter Eve
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