Obedience to the seasons' marshall-rod,
That is a law of God,
Here beauty passes with her gorgeous train,
On paths that range from bud to grain.
O, here the searching eyes
In traffic for the soul's good gain
Earn wealth of rare delight.
Far pathways of surprise,
In color's frumenty bedight,
Lead off from avenues of day
Through miles of pageantries:
And from the starry chancels of the night
And the inscrutable farther skies,
Beyond where trackless comets stray,
Outspreads a world in thought's array.
And lo! the heart's true voices sing
From the exulting reverent breast,
And lips proclaim, with adoration blessed,
Glad Alleluias to the King.
Prompt is our praise unto a jewelled queen
In all her courtly splendor set,
(Fair as those fairylands are seen
By childhood's other sight):
But if in pauper mien,
Too poor for stray regret
Where crowded streets affright
She stood in beggary,
Unknown, though faithful to her high degree,—
O, then her praise 'twere easy to forget.
Yet ever here,
For all of time's prompt fickleness—
From plenteous June and wide largess
Of full midsummer days,
To dwarf December pitiless
Amid the earth's uncomplimented ways—
Yea, constant through the changeful year,
This queenly Height commands our praise.
To stand in meek unflinching hardihood
When fortune blows its storm of fright,
And work to full effect that good
Resolved in open days of clearer sight—
O, this is worth!
That daily sees the soul
To braver liberties give birth,
That heeds not time's annoy,
And hears surrounding voices roll
Perennial circumstance of joy.
Then come not only when the springtime blows
The old familiar strangeness of its breath
Across the long-lain snows,
And chants her resurrected songs
About the tombs of death;
Nor yet when summer glows
In roseate throngs
And works her plenitude of deeds
By tangled dells and waving meads,
Come here in beauty's pilgrimage:
Nor when the autumn reads
Illuminate her page
With tints of magicry besprent
Of iridescent wonderment—
(As scrolls in old monastic towers,
Done in an earnest far-off age).
But choose to come in winter hours
To see how character can live,
How noble character will give
Through desolate distress
And cold neglect's duress,
The fulness of its powers
And win the soul its victor sign.
Yea, come when in a peasant gown,
Amid the ample banners of the pine,
And the resounding harpers of the vine,
Lone winter holds upon the Height
Her court in full renown.
Obedient her courtiers go,
Their gonfalons aloft and bright,
And scatter pearls of snow;
Her sturdy knighthood wear for crown
Prismatic sheen in young delight,
And wave the cedar oriflamme on high;
While windward heralds cry,
Across the battlements of earth
To parapets along the sky,
The lauds of character's full worth.
The winter passes and the days come in
Vibrant with spring.
And men find welcome at the Easter tomb,
Reward they win,
Who make their hearts with courage sing
Through Lenten opportunity of gloom:
(Not as the Pharisees,
With faces lacrimose,
Who wear pretence of ashen woes,
And murmur like the tuneless bees,
Whose honies are hypocrisies),
But men of character's delight,
Who like this valiant Height
Still serving through the bleakest day,
With humble offerings of sound and sight,
Do steadfast stand and pray:
O, count those souls of noble worth,
And God's good pleasure on His earth,
Who still, if joy or pain
Brings sun or rain,
Heroic sing
The law of Alleluia to the King.
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