Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79. | | | | New England: Mount Desert, Me. | | Green Mountain | | John Weiss (1818–1879) |
| | (From Mount Desert)
WITH jocund friends the island’s mount I climb | |
| To kindred gladness that, beyond the wood | |
| Whose pines are heavy with the solitude, | |
| Sacks all the space of sea and sky sublime. | |
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| Rocks, left austere by winter, laugh again | 5 |
| With sweet and happy hearts at summer-tide; | |
| O’er cliff and ledge and wave goes laughter wide, | |
| As o’er the sea noon’s pelting silver rain. | |
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| A flock of little sails below appears | |
| To forage all along the shining waste; | 10 |
| Now huddled, and now scattering, without haste, | |
| For morning waifs, like sea-birds, each one steers. | |
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| Of all the sails that catch the sun, and smile, | |
| There ’s one that takes my own mood out to sea: | |
| Its laughing side is hidden on the lee; | 15 |
| Its shadow tacks to windward all the while. | |
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| Mid all the gladness, just a faint reserve | |
| Wafts me apart, but not to scowl and gloom; | |
| The world’s wide laughter keeps me in its room,— | |
| My shadow is not sharp enough to swerve. | 20 |
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| ’T is but the thickness of a sail between. | |
| A cloud has caught its buoyant, gilded woof, | |
| Too thin to keep the sailor’s heart aloof: | |
| He ’s comrade still of all the happy scene. | | | | |
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