The Monitor-register., 1897-11-19
CLOVER.
BY SIDNEY LANIER.

BY SIDNEY LANIER
| Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Lovers, many yet one
| grave good-morrow to your Grace, all
FAIR tilth and fruitful seasonsl
| Lo, how still
The midmorn empties you of men, save me
| Speak TO your lover, meadow! None car
hear.
| lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation,
'Tis perfect hour.
| From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day
Has rippled as brook right pleasantly
Halfway to noon; but now with widening
turn
Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked,
And rounds into silver pool of morn,
Bottomed with clovertields. My heart Just
hears
Eight lingering strokes of some far village
bell,
That speaks the hour so inward voiced me.
seems
Times conscience has but whispered him
eight hints
Of revolution. Reigns that mild surcease
That stills the middle OF each rural morn
When nimble noises that with sunri Sc ran
About the farms have sunk again to rest;
When Tom no more across the horse-lot calls
To sleepy Dick, nor Dick husk-yoiced un-
braids
The sway -back'd roam for stamping on his
foot
With sulphurous oath and kicks in flank.
what time
The cart-chain clinks across the slanting
shaft,
And, kitchenward, the rafting bucket
plumps
Souse down the well, where quivering ducks
quack loud,
And Susan Cook is singing,
Up the sky
The hesitating moon slow trembles on,
Faint as a new-washed soul but lately up
From out u buried body. For about,
A hundred slopes in hundred fantasies
Most ravishingly run, so smooth of curve
That seem to see the fluent plain
Rise toward a rain of clover blooms, as lakes
Pout gentle mounds OF plashment up TO
meet
Big shower-drops.
Tell me, dear Glover, tell me in mine ear;
Cost thou to market with thy pink and
green?
OF what avail this color and this grace2
Vert thou but squat of stem and brindle-
brown.
| Still careless herds would feed. poet
thou:
What worth the whole of all thine art7
Three leaves, instruct me Now ye bear,
For coverbl ooms, fair, stately heads of men
With poets faces, heartsome, dear and pale
sweet V1sages of all the souls of time
whose loving service to the world has been
In the artists way expressed and booied
oh,
In arms reach, here be Dante, Keats, Chopin,
Raphael, Lucretius, Omar. Angelo,
Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakes peare,
Bach,
And Buddha (sweetest masters Let me Law
These arms this once, this humble once,
Your reverend necks-the most containing
clasp,
For all in all, this world e'er saw y and there,
Yet further on, bright throngs unnamabIe
OF workers worshipful, nobilities
In the Court of Gentle Service, silent men,
Dwellers in woods, brooders on helpful art,
And all the press of them, the fair, the
large,
That wrought with beauty.
Lo what bulk is here
Now comes the Course-of-things shaped like
OK,
Slow browsing, DER my hillside, ponder
ously-
The huge-brawned. tame, and workful
Course of-things,
That hath his grass if earth be round or fat,
bjs fo,,o
Or faiths flash out. This cool, unasking OK
Comes browsing DER my hills and Wales OF
Time,
And thrusts me out his tongue, and curls it,
sharp,
And sickle-wis about my poets heads,
And twists them all tn-Dante. Keats,
Chopin
Raphael, Lucretius. Omar, Angelo,
Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert Shakespeare,
And Buddha. IN one sheaf, and champs and
chews,
With slantly- y-churning jaws, and swallows
Then slowly plants mighty forefoot out,
And makes advance to futureward, one
So; they have played their part
And to this end {?
This, God? This, troublous bleeding Earth ?
This Sun
Of hot, quick pains7 To this no-end that
ends,
These Masters wrought and wept, and
sweated blood,
And burned, and loved, and ached with
public shame,
And found no friends to breathe their loves
to save
Woods and wet piIIows9 This was all ?
o This Ox2
"Nay," quoth a sum OF voices in mine ear,
Goods clover, we, and feed His Course-of-
things;
The pasture is Gods pasture; systems
strange
OF food an2. fiber1aent. he hath. whereby
The general Drawn is built for plans of his
To quality precise.
Kinsman. lea1n this;
The artists market is the heart of man;
The artists p. ce, some fittle good.of man.
Tease not thy vision with vain search tor
ends.
The end of means is art that works by love,
, The end of ends-in Gods beginnings lost.