As in the Woodland I Walk
As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn—
How from the dross and the drift the beautiful things return,
And the fires quenched in October in April reburn;
How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration
of sleets and snows,
And rottenness changes back to the breath and the cheek
of the rose,
And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom
that blows;
How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door
of the light,
And how soft the caress of the hand that to shape
must not fear to smite,
And how the dim pearl of the moon is drawn from the gulf
of the night;
How, when the great tree falls, with its empire
of rustling leaves,
The earth with a thousand hands its sunlit ruin receives,
And out of the wreck of its glory each secret artist weaves
Splendours anew and arabesques and tints on his swaying loom,
Soft as the eyes of April, and black as the brows of doom,
And the fires give back in blue-eyed flowers the woodland
they consume;
How when the streams run dry, the thunder calls on the hills,
And the clouds spout silver showers in the laps
of the little rills,
And each spring brims with the morning star,
and each thirsty fountain fills;
And how, when the songs seemed ended, and all the music mute,
There is always somewhere a secret tune, some string
of a hidden lute,
Lonely and undismayed that has faith in the flower
and the fruit.
So I learn in the woods—that all things come again,
That sorrow turns to joy, and that laughter is born of pain,
That the burning gold of June is the gray of December’s rain.
