That draws the lily from the mire
And trodden dust to beauty turns.

Strange wand of Beauty--that transforms
Old dross to dreams, that softly glows
On the fierce rainbowed front of storms,
And smiles on unascended snows,
That from the travail of lone seas
Wrests sighing shell and moonlit pearl,
And gathers up all sorceries
In the white being of one girl.




AS IN THE WOODLAND I WALK

As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn--
How from the dross and the drift the beautiful things return,
And the fires quenched in October in April reburn;

How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration
of sleets and snows,
And rottenness changes back to the breath and the cheek
of the rose,
And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom
that blows;

How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door
of the light,