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(Excerpt)
THOUSAND minstrels woke within me, | |
| “Our music’s in the hills”:— | |
| Gayest pictures rose to win me, | |
| Leopard-colored rills. | |
| “Up! If thou knew’st who calls | 5 |
| To twilight parks of beech and pine, | |
| High over the river intervals, | |
| Above the ploughman’s highest line, | |
| Over the owner’s farthest walls! | |
| Up! where the airy citadel | 10 |
| O’erlooks the surging landscape’s swell! | |
| Let not unto the stones the Day | |
| Her lily and rose, her sea and land display; | |
| Read the celestial sign! | |
| Lo! the south answers to the north; | 15 |
| Bookworm, break this sloth urbane; | |
| A greater spirit bids thee forth | |
| Than the gay dreams which thee detain. | |
| Mark how the climbing Oreads | |
| Beckon thee to their arcades! | 20 |
| Youth, for a moment free as they, | |
| Teach thy feet to feel the ground, | |
| Ere yet arrives the wintry day | |
| When Time thy feet has bound. | |
| Take the bounty of thy birth, | 25 |
| Taste the lordship of the earth.” | |
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| I heard, and I obeyed,— | |
| Assured that he who made the claim, | |
| Well known, but loving not a name, | |
| Was not to be gainsaid. | 30 |
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| Ere yet the summoning voice was still, | |
| I turned to Cheshire’s haughty hill. | |
| From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed | |
| Like ample banner flung abroad | |
| To all the dwellers in the plains | 35 |
| Round about, a hundred miles, | |
| With salutation to the sea, and to the bordering isles. | |
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| In his own loom’s garment dressed, | |
| By his proper bounty blessed, | |
| Fast abides this constant giver, | 40 |
| Pouring many a cheerful river; | |
| To far eyes, an aerial isle | |
| Unploughed, which finer spirits pile, | |
| Which morn and crimson evening paint | |
| For bard, for lover, and for saint; | 45 |
| The people’s pride, the country’s core, | |
| Inspirer, prophet evermore; | |
| Pillar which God aloft had set | |
| So that men might it not forget; | |
| It should be their life’s ornament, | 50 |
| And mix itself with each event; | |
| Gauge and calendar and dial, | |
| Weatherglass and chemic phial, | |
| Garden of berries, perch of birds, | |
| Pasture of pool-haunting herds. * * * * * | 55 |
| On the summit as I stood, | |
| O’er the floor of plain and flood | |
| Seemed to me, the towering hill | |
| Was not altogether still, | |
| But a quiet sense conveyed; | 60 |
| If I err not, thus it said:— | |
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| “Many feet in summer seek, | |
| Oft, my far-appearing peak; | |
| In the dreaded winter-time, | |
| None save dappling shadows climb | 65 |
| Under clouds, my lonely head, | |
| Old as the sun, old almost as the shade. | |
| And comest thou | |
| To see strange forests and new snow, | |
| And tread uplifted land? | 70 |
| And leavest thou thy lowland race, | |
| Here amid clouds to stand? | |
| And wouldst be my companion | |
| Where I gaze, and still shall gaze, | |
| Through hoarding nights and spending days, | 75 |
| When forests fall, and man is gone, | |
| Over tribes and over times, | |
| At the burning Lyre, | |
| Nearing me, | |
| With its stars of northern fire, | 80 |
| In many a thousand years? * * * * * | |
| “Monadnock is a mountain strong, | |
| Tall and good my kind among; | |
| But well I know, no mountain can, | |
| Zion or Meru, measure with man. | 85 |
| For it is on zodiacs writ, | |
| Adamant is soft to wit: | |
| And when the greater comes again | |
| With my secret in his brain, | |
| I shall pass, as glides my shadow | 90 |
| Daily over hill and meadow. | |
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| “Through all time, in light, in gloom, | |
| Well I hear the approaching feet | |
| On the flinty pathway beat | |
| Of him that cometh, and shall come; | 95 |
| Of him who shall as lightly bear | |
| My daily load of woods and streams, | |
| As doth this round sky-cleaving boat | |
| Which never strains its rocky beams; | |
| Whose timbers, as they silent float, | 100 |
| Alps and Caucasus uprear, | |
| And the long Alleghanies here, | |
| And all town-sprinkled lands that be, | |
| Sailing through stars with all their history. | |
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| “Every morn I lift my head, | 105 |
| See New England underspread, | |
| South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound, | |
| From Katskill east to the sea-bound. | |
| Anchored fast for many an age, | |
| I await the bard and sage, | 110 |
| Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, | |
| Shall string Monadnock like a bead. * * * * * | |
| He comes, but not of that race bred | |
| Who daily climb my specular head. | |
| Oft as morning wreathes my scarf, | 115 |
| Fled the last plumule of the Dark, | |
| Pants up hither the spruce clerk | |
| From South Cove and City Wharf. | |
| I take him up my rugged sides, | |
| Half-repentant, scant of breath,— | 120 |
| Bead-eyes my granite chaos show, | |
| And my midsummer snow; | |
| Open the daunting map beneath,— | |
| All his county, sea and land, | |
| Dwarfed to measure of his hand; | 125 |
| His day’s ride is a furlong space, | |
| His city-tops a glimmering haze. | |
| I plant his eyes on the sky hoop bounding; | |
| “See there the grim gray rounding | |
| Of the bullet of the earth | 130 |
| Whereon ye sail, | |
| Tumbling steep | |
| In the uncontinented deep.” | |
| He looks on that, and he turns pale. | |
| ’T is even so, this treacherous kite, | 135 |
| Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere, | |
| Thoughtless of its anxious freight, | |
| Plunges eyeless on forever; | |
| And he, poor parasite, | |
| Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,— | 140 |
| Who is the captain he knows not, | |
| Port or pilot trows not,— | |
| Risk or ruin he must share. | |
| I scowl on him with my cloud, | |
| With my north-wind chill his blood; | 145 |
| I lame him, clattering down the rocks; | |
| And to live he is in fear. | |
| Then, at last, I let him down | |
| Once more into his dapper town, | |
| To chatter, frightened to his clan, | 150 |
| And forget me if he can.” * * * * * | |
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