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(From Yamoyden)
THE MORNING air was freshly breathing, | |
| The morning mists were wildly wreathing; | |
| Day’s earliest beams were kindling o’er | |
| The wood-crowned hills and murmuring shore. | |
| ’T was summer; and the forests threw | 5 |
| Their checkered shapes of varying hue, | |
| In mingling, changeful shadows seen, | |
| O’er hill and bank, and headland green. | |
| Blithe birds were carolling on high | |
| Their matin music to the sky, | 10 |
| As glanced their brilliant hues along, | |
| Filling the groves with life and song; | |
| All innocent and wild and free | |
| Their sweet, ethereal minstrelsy. | |
| The dew-drop sparkled on the spray, | 15 |
| Danced on the wave the inconstant ray; | |
| And moody grief, with dark control, | |
| There only swayed the human soul! | |
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| With equal swell, above the flood, | |
| The forest-cinctured mountain stood; | 20 |
| Its eastward cliffs, a rampart wild, | |
| Rock above rock sublimely piled. | |
| What scenes of beauty met his eye, | |
| The watchful sentinel on high! | |
| With all its isles and inlets lay | 25 |
| Beneath, the calm, majestic bay; | |
| Like molten gold, all glittering spread, | |
| Where the clear sun his influence shed; | |
| In wreathy, crispéd brilliance borne, | |
| While laughed the radiance of the morn. | 30 |
| Round rocks, that from the headlands far | |
| Their barriers reared, with murmuring war, | |
| The chafing stream, in eddying play, | |
| Fretted and dashed its foamy spray; | |
| Along the shelving sands its swell | 35 |
| With hushed and equal cadence fell; | |
| And here, beneath the whispering grove, | |
| Ran rippling in the shadowy cove. | |
| Thy thickets with their liveliest hue, | |
| Aquetnet green! were fair to view; | 40 |
| Far curved the winding shore, where rose | |
| Pocasset’s hills in calm repose; | |
| Or where descending rivers gave | |
| Their tribute to the ampler wave. | |
| Emerging frequent from the tide, | 45 |
| Scarce noticed mid its waters wide, | |
| Lay flushed with morning’s roseate smile, | |
| The gay bank of some little isle; | |
| Where the lone heron plumed his wing, | |
| Or spread it as in act to spring, | 50 |
| Yet paused, as if delight it gave | |
| To bend above the glorious wave. | |
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