IV

The heavens are filled with a vast clarity;
All is glad joy, innocent hope, bonhomie.
The fine lake the valley encircles is bright;
The field coming fertile, the vine coming ripe;
All is sap, life and sound—everything teems,
Green boughs, blue shimmer, watery gleams,
Little birds bickering one with another.
What does the butterfly have? The grasshopper?
Grasshopper has grass, and the butterfly air;
And they both have April, laughing skies clear.
Rising from all, Nature’s joyful refrain there;
A song soft ascending that turns into prayer.
The chick runs, the child plays and dances, the lamb
Leaps, and—letting its water fall, dram by dram—
The old grotto’s human face tenderly weeps;
The wind reads some text to a presence (that keeps
Itself hidden) from God’s greatest poem;
Bird speaks to fragrance; flower to sunbeam;
Over the ponds green tents raised by the pine;
The nests are warm. Azure finds earth is sublime;
Wave and sphere; all climates blurring together;
Here autumn, here summer, here springtime weather.
Oh hillsides! Oh field! Gusts, sighs, breath sustains!
The hosanna of forests and rivers, and plains
Rises solemnly to the day’s Father, above;
And all things here whitened are stanzas of love;
The swan declares: “Light!” and the lily says: “Mercy!”
And like a vast ear the sky attends to this melody.
Evening comes; and the globe, now, is struck-sight,
Becomes an enormous eye gazing at night;
It savours, enraptured, holiness sans end there,
The contemplation of empyrean splendour,
The clouds of black crêpe and silver, the height,
Which majestically blesses and blazes with light,
The constellations—those hydras of stars—
The emanations of the dark and the deep, blurs
Your outpourings, O diamond expanse,
And all of the shadow with all radiance!
The infinite rising in ecstatic streams.
And, all the while Satan the Envious dreams.

The Terrace, April 1840.