| |
| WHILE I recline |
| At ease beneath |
| This immemorial pine, |
| Small sphere! |
| (By dusky fingers brought this morning here |
| And shown with boastful smiles), |
| I turn thy cloven sheath, |
| Through which the soft white fibres peer, |
| That, with their gossamer bands, |
| Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, |
| And slowly, thread by thread, |
| Draw forth the folded strands, |
| Than which the trembling line, |
| By whose frail help yon startled spider fled |
| Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, |
| Is scarce more fine; |
| And as the tangled skein |
| Unravels in my hands, |
| Betwixt me and the noonday light |
| A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles |
| The landscape broadens on my sight, |
| As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell |
| Like that which, in the ocean shell, |
| With mystic sound |
| Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, |
| And turns some city lane |
| Into the restless main, |
| With all his capes and isles! |
| |
| Yonder bird, |
| Which floats, as if at rest, |
| In those blue tracts above the thunder, where |
| No vapors cloud the stainless air, |
| And never sound is heard, |
| Unless at such rare time |
| When, from the City of the Blest, |
| Rings down some golden chime, |
| Sees not from his high place |
| So vast a cirque of summer space |
| As widens round me in one mighty field, |
| Which, rimmed by seas and sands, |
| Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams |
| Of gray Atlantic dawns; |
| And, broad as realms made up of many lands, |
| Is lost afar |
| Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns |
| Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams |
| Against the Evening Star! |
| And lo! |
| To the remotest point of sight, |
| Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, |
| The endless field is white; |
| And the whole landscape glows, |
| For many a shining league away, |
| With such accumulated light |
| As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! |
| Nor lack there (for the vision grows, |
| And the small charm within my hands— |
| More potent even than the fabled one, |
| Which oped whatever golden mystery |
| Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, |
| The curious ointment of the Arabian tale— |
| Beyond all mortal sense |
| Doth stretch my sight’s horizon, and I see, |
| Beneath its simple influence, |
| As if, with Uriel’s crown, |
| I stood in some great temple of the Sun, |
| And looked, as Uriel, down!) |
| Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green |
| With all the common gifts of God. |
| For temperate airs and torrid sheen |
| Weave Edens of the sod; |
| Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold |
| Broad rivers wind their devious ways; |
| A hundred isles in their embraces fold |
| A hundred luminous bays; |
| And through yon purple haze |
| Vast mountains lift their plumëd peaks cloud-crowned; |
| And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps, |
| An unhewn forest girds them grandly round, |
| In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps! |
| Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze |
| Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! |
| Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays |
| Above it, as to light a favorite hearth! |
| Ye Clouds, that in your temples in the West |
| See nothing brighter than its humblest flowers! |
| And you, ye Winds, that on the ocean’s breast |
| Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers! |
| Bear witness with me in my song of praise, |
| And tell the world that, since the world began, |
| No fairer land hath fired a poet’s lays, |
| Or given a home to man. |
| |
| But these are charms already widely blown! |
| His be the meed whose pencil’s trace |
| Hath touched our very swamps with grace, |
| And round whose tuneful way |
| All Southern laurels bloom; |
| The Poet of “The Woodlands,” unto whom |
| Alike are known |
| The flute’s low breathing and the trumpet’s tone, |
| And the soft west wind’s sighs; |
| But who shall utter all the debt, |
| O Land wherein all powers are met |
| That bind a people’s heart, |
| The world doth owe thee at this day, |
| And which it never can repay, |
| Yet scarcely deigns to own! |
| Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing |
| The source wherefrom doth spring |
| That mighty commerce which, confined |
| To the mean channels of no selfish mart, |
| Goes out to every shore |
| Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships |
| That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips |
| In alien lands; |
| Joins with a delicate web remotest strands; |
| And gladdening rich and poor, |
| Doth gild Parisian domes, |
| Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes, |
| And only bounds its blessings by mankind! |
| In offices like these, thy mission lies, |
| My Country! and it shall not end |
| As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend |
| In blue above thee; though thy foes be hard |
| And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard |
| Thy hearth-stones as a bulwark; make thee great |
| In white and bloodless state; |
| And haply, as the years increase— |
| Still working through its humbler reach |
| With that large wisdom which the ages teach— |
| Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace! |
| As men who labor in that mine |
| Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed |
| Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead, |
| Hear the dull booming of the world of brine |
| Above them, and a mighty muffled roar |
| Of winds and waters, yet toil calmly on, |
| And split the rock, and pile the massive ore, |
| Or carve a niche, or shape the archëd roof; |
| So I, as calmly, weave my woof |
| Of song, chanting the days to come, |
| Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air |
| Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each dawn |
| Wakes from its starry silence to the hum |
| Of many gathering armies. Still, |
| In that we sometimes hear, |
| Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woe |
| Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I know |
| The end must crown us, and a few brief years |
| Dry all our tears, |
| I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will |
| Resigned, O Lord! we cannot all forget |
| That there is much even Victory must regret. |
| And, therefore, not too long |
| From the great burthen of our country’s wrong |
| Delay our just release! |
| And, if it may be, save |
| These sacred fields of peace |
| From stain of patriot or of hostile blood! |
| Oh, help us, Lord! to roll the crimson flood |
| Back on its course, and, while our banners wing |
| Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling |
| To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave |
| Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate |
| The lenient future of his fate |
| There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays |
| Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas. |
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