| |
| WHILE I recline | |
| At ease beneath | |
| This immemorial pine, | |
| Small sphere! | |
| (By dusky fingers brought this morning here | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| And turns some city lane | |
| Into the restless main, | |
| With all his capes and isles! | |
| |
| Yonder bird, | |
| Which floats, as if at rest, | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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, | 40 |
| 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 | 45 |
| 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, | 50 |
| 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! | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| 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, | 65 |
| 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 | 70 |
| 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; | 75 |
| 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! | 80 |
| 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 | 85 |
| 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, | 90 |
| 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, | 95 |
| 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, | 100 |
| 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, | 105 |
| 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 | 110 |
| 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; | 115 |
| 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! | 120 |
| 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 | 125 |
| 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— | 130 |
| 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 | 135 |
| 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 | 140 |
| 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, | 145 |
| 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, | 150 |
| 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 | 155 |
| 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 | 160 |
| 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 | 165 |
| There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays | |
| Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas. | |
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