The Portland daily press., 1873-05-27
POETRY.
from the Atlantic Monthly for June.l
The Missing Leaf.
BY j. t. TRowBRIDGE

BY J.T. TRowBRIDGE.
By chance in the dusty old library foraging, |
Seeking some food for my fancy, drew |
From its shelf stout volume entitled The Origin
And End of Creation" "a sort of review
VI the works OF the Lord by confident cTite t.ts
Just what my unsuitable soul had been craving.
bore the rich prize to nook by the window,
And revelled straightway IN the lore OF the ages
Chine e. Persian, Roman, Greek, Hebrew and Hin
With modern research to its ultimate stages;
All which, to what followed was but the musicians
Light touches to see If his strings were in tune,
verse
Used by the wizard to conjure his visions;
Then opened the writer's grand scheme of the
universe.
He held the round world in his hand like watch,
With the sun and the stars Tor the chain and the
Showed the cases of gold and of crystal, the notch
Where the thing was wound up, pivot, handspring
and wheel,
And-in short, you'd have fancied his knowledge
was such,
He could take il to pieces and put it together,
Ana SET 1t 1t agoing again with touch
VI JUST The rlght oil from his erudite feather!
read and read on by divine curiosity
Fired, in pursuit Of one srill missing pc ge;
One Leaf 10 redeem this portentous verbosity
~, then-weH, Just hung down the book III rage
Though the window out into The garden sprung
Put screens OF red roses and jasmines between US,
And cooled my hot brow and my anger among
The dear little ilIiterate pinks and verbenas
The martins that flew to their summer house door,
The vouble finches their little ones feeding,
The snail with his pack on his back, taught me more
Than all tie pedantc sad stuff I'd been reading.
The aver moved by without ripple or swirl,
The world in its bosom, wondrous il uslol!
And even the slow kitchen smokes upward curl
limited beauties beyond my great authors solution
spiieG weaving his net by the stream;
And in the thin gossamer's light agitation
saw my philosopher Haunting his scheme
Beforet lie vast mystical web of creation
I
Tne -isterly birches bowed over the glass,
Their white limbs reflected the boys in their boat,
The colts on the bank, fetlock-deep in the grass;
heard, over hayfelds and clover lots waited,
The lowing OF kline; and SO cool was the kiss
Of the breeze my temples--the air as quaffed it,
SO sweet to my sense-that mere eathing was
And cried, 'Who can say how this life has its being
How landscape and sky with delight overhll me;
Why sound should enchant; how these eyes have
their seeing;
How passion and rapture enkindle and thrill me?
prize the least pebble your science can bring,
Or whispering SHE'LL from the shore OF life's ocean
No word the true prophet or poet may sing,
But deep in my heart strs responsive emotion;
Yet who can tell aught of the afternoon glory.
his light and this eLher, this and this clover?
Not syllable lisped, OF the marvellous story,
In all your nine hundred dull pages and oyer
What moulds to my likeness these limbs and these
This tangible form to the form hid within it9
Bright robe renewed daily and nightly by Natures
Invisible spindles that ceaselessly spin it,
Marbler-frm fibre and milk -fne flament;
The pulses soft shuttle mysteriously weaving
From dust and corruption a living habiliment:
Oldest OF miracles, still past believing!
And you--did you fancy that you could Unfold it,
And label it, fast in your tissue of fallacies?
While firm in the grasp of your reason you hold it,
1t flies, it defies your most subtitle analysis
There's something that will not be measured and
weighed,
And brought to the test of your last sublimation;
And this is the little mistake that you made
That you left it quite out Of your grand calculation
Though other than bigots have deemed, the Creator
Is not the blind physical force you believe him;
Not less, Q, be sure, but unspeakably greater,
ceive him!
This sky Enclosed world was all built by his law;
Yet only from perfect ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS plan
The crystalline marvel arose without flaw,
And life through all forms circled upward to man
Though in ttheir beginning all things be one
Through all, over all, flows the formative Soul;
In eacn particle thrills the Divine Omnipresence,
As gravity binds and embraces the whole
or nothing comes nothing; springs rise not above
Their source in the far-hidden heart of the noun
tains;
Whence then have descended the Wisdom and Love
mat IN man leap to light in intelligent fountains?'
So bathed in the sunset stood by the stream.
Win heart full Of joy and devout alteration
EnWrapped IN my mystery, dreaming my dream
III my soul seemed dissolved in the Soul of Crea-
looked, and saw wonder on wonder without.
And, looking within, beheld wonder on wonder
And trembled between, like the swan floating ont
With one sky arched above and one sky imaged
under Ne