A DAY OF SUNSHINE by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O Gift of God! O perfect day:
Whereon shall no man work, but play:
Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be!

Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies:
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.

And over me unrolls on high
The splendid scenery of the sky,
Where through a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon,

Towards yonder cloudland in the West
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts
Its craggy summits white with drifts.

Blow, winds! And waft through all the rooms
The snowflakes of the cherry blooms!
Blow, winds! And bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!

O life and love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?

The Gift, the Islands of the Blest call for capitalization because Longfellow’s optimistic transcendentalism shines through in his interpretation of both nature and man as revelations of God. Of course, a perfect day of sun often precedes or follows an imperfect day of shade. If we look above and beyond our President Obama we can unroll "on high the splendid scenery of the sky," but to see and hear the earthly presence of the big O, dark again is another day of his dawning.