THE MARSH.

Safely moored on the dappled water, The broad green lily-pads dip and sway, While like a skipper a gray frog rides The biggest leaf in the tiny bay. Merrily leap the brown-cheeked waves To seize the sunlight's liberal gold, Which strays and wanders among the reeds, And on the stones of the beach is rolled. O'er marish meadows, and far beyond, Silken and green or velvety gray, Tufted grasses with shifting colors In the wholesome north wind toss and play. Lonely and sad, on the sea of green The cardinal-flower a lighthouse stands, A scarlet blaze in the morning sun To guide the honey-bees' toiling bands. What was it for, this flower's beauty, Its royal color's marvellous glow, Not, like a good deed, still rejoicing The soul that grew it, though no one know? All unconscious, only a flower, Life without zest, and death without thought, Lost as a stone to the sweet deep pleasure Its scarlet wonder to me has brought. Has it, I ponder, no sense of pleasing, No least estate in the world of joy? Have the leaf and the grasses no conscious sense Of what they give us—no want or cloy? Not so unlike us. The words that weight us With keenest sorrow and longest pain Fall oft from lips that rest unconscious If that they give us be loss or gain. Do I only have power to fill me From sun and flower with joy intense? Has yon cold frog on his lonely leaf No lower share through a duller sense? Think you the ladies he woos are sought For form or color or beauty's sake?— That, touched with sorrow, he mourns to-day Some mottled Helen beneath the lake? Why should fret us this constant riddle, To know if Nature be kind or harsh To the pensive frog on his green-ribbed raft, The scarlet queen of the lonely marsh? Haply, in thought-spheres far above us Some may watch us with doubts like ours, Asking if we have wit or reason, Asking if pain or joy be ours. But does it vex me, this endless riddle I toss about in my helpless brain, To know if life be worth the having, If just mere being be any gain? Scarce can I answer. Something surely The thought has brought me this summer morn— Something for me in life were missing If frog and flower had ne'er been born.