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| GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven | |
| With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven | |
| Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,— | |
| Emerald twilights,— | |
| Virginal shy lights, | 5 |
| Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, | |
| When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades | |
| Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, | |
| Of the heavenly woods and glades, | |
| That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within | 10 |
| The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;— | |
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| Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire,— | |
| Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire. | |
| Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,— | |
| Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, | 15 |
| Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, | |
| Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;— | |
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| O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, | |
| While the riotous noonday sun of the June-day long did shine, | |
| Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; | 20 |
| But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, | |
| And the sun doth wait at the ponderous gate of the West, | |
| And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem | |
| Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,— | |
| Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, | 25 |
| And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke | |
| Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, | |
| And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, | |
| And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, | |
| That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn | 30 |
| Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore | |
| When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, | |
| And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain | |
| Drew over me out of the merciless width of the plain,— | |
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| Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face | 35 |
| The vast sweet visage of space. | |
| To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, | |
| Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, | |
| For a mete and a mark | |
| To the forest-dark:— | 40 |
| So: | |
| Affable live-oak, bending low— | |
| Thus—with your favor—soft, with a reverent hand, | |
| (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) | |
| Swinging your beauty aside, with a step I stand | 45 |
| On the firm-packed sand, | |
| Free | |
| By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. | |
| Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band | |
| Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. | 50 |
| Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl | |
| As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. | |
| Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, | |
| Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. | |
| And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? | 55 |
| The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! | |
| A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, | |
| Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, | |
| Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, | |
| To the terminal blue of the main. | 60 |
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| Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? | |
| Somehow my soul seems suddenly free | |
| From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, | |
| By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. | |
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| Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free | 65 |
| Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! | |
| Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, | |
| Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won | |
| God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain | |
| And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. | 70 |
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| As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, | |
| Behold I will build me a nest on the favor of God: | |
| I will fly in the favor of God as the marsh-hen flies | |
| In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies: | |
| By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod | 75 |
| I will heartily lay me a hold on the favor of God. | |
| Oh, like to the favor of God, for the largeness within, | |
| Is the range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. | |
| And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea | |
| Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood of the tide must be: | 80 |
| Look how the grace of the sea doth go | |
| About and about through the intricate channels that flow | |
| Here and there, | |
| Everywhere, | |
| Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the high-lying lanes, | 85 |
| And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, | |
| That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow | |
| In the rose-and-silver evening glow. | |
| Farewell, my lord Sun! | |
| The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run | 90 |
| ’Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; | |
| Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that nestward whir: | |
| Passeth, and all is still: and the currents cease to run; | |
| And the sea and the marsh are one. | |
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| How still the plains of the waters be! | 95 |
| The tide is in his ecstasy. | |
| The tide is at his highest height: | |
| And it is night. | |
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| And now from the vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep | |
| Roll in on the souls of men, | 100 |
| But who will reveal to our waking ken | |
| The forms that swim and the shapes that creep | |
| Under the waters of sleep? | |
| And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in | |
| On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn. | 105 |
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