Nature is not as you imagine her:
She's not a mold, nor yet a soulless mask-
She is made up of soul and freedom
She is made up of love and speech . . . ...
The earth a cheerless look still wears,
But spring's breath is already swaying
The dead stalks in the field and playing
With boughs as yet of leafage bare. ...
Columbus, take your laurel wreath!
You've done the map of whole Earth and Nations
And finished to the end the list
Of deals, unfinished in the word's creation. ...
There is a song in the sea waves,
A concord - in the spats of nature,
And a reed, by a tune of rustle captured,
In the flood of music gently sways. ...
I thought to do a deed of chivalry,
An act of worth, which haply in her sight
Who was my mistress should recorded be
And of the nations. And, when thus the fight
Faltered and men once bold with faces white
Turned this and that way in excuse to flee,
I only stood, and by the foeman's might
Was overborne and mangled cruelly.
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