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(From An Indian-Summer Reverie)
BELOW, the Charles—a stripe of nether sky, | |
| Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, | |
| Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, | |
| Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, | |
| Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond, | 5 |
| A silver circle like an inland pond— | |
| Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green. | |
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| Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of sight | |
| Who cannot in their various incomes share, | |
| From every season drawn, of shade and light, | 10 |
| Who sees in them but levels brown and bare; | |
| Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free | |
| On them its largess of variety, | |
| For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare. | |
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| In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green, | 15 |
| O’er which the light winds run with glimmering feet: | |
| Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, | |
| There, darker growths o’er hidden ditches meet; | |
| And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, | |
| As if the silent shadow of a cloud | 20 |
| Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet. | |
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| All round, upon the river’s slippery edge, | |
| Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, | |
| Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge; | |
| Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide, | 25 |
| Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun, | |
| And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run | |
| Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide. | |
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| In Summer ’t is a blithesome sight to see, | |
| As, step by step, with measured swing, they pass, | 30 |
| The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee, | |
| Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grass; | |
| Then, stretched beneath a rick’s shade in a ring, | |
| Their nooning take, while one begins to sing | |
| A stave that droops and dies ’neath the close sky of brass. | 35 |
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| Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink, | |
| Remembering duty, in mid quaver stops | |
| Just ere he sweeps o’er rapture’s tremulous brink, | |
| And ’twixt the windrows most demurely drops, | |
| A decorous bird of business, who provides | 40 |
| For his brown mate and fledglings six besides, | |
| And looks from right to left, a farmer mid his crops. | |
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| Another change subdues them in the Fall, | |
| But saddens not; they still show merrier tints, | |
| Though sober russet seems to cover all; | 45 |
| When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints, | |
| Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, | |
| Redeems with rarer hues the season’s loss, | |
| As Dawn’s feet there had touched and left their rosy prints. | |
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| Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, | 50 |
| Lean o’er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, | |
| While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, | |
| Glow opposite;—the marshes drink their fill | |
| And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade | |
| Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, | 55 |
| Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond’s darkening hill. | |
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| Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, | |
| Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, | |
| And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, | |
| While firmer ice the eager boy awaits, | 60 |
| Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, | |
| And until bedtime plays with his desire, | |
| Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;— | |
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| Then, every morn, the river’s banks shine bright | |
| With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, | 65 |
| By the frost’s clinking hammers forged at night, | |
| ’Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, | |
| Giving a pretty emblem of the day | |
| When guiltier arms in light shall melt away, | |
| And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from war’s cramping mail. | 70 |
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| And now those waterfalls the ebbing river | |
| Twice every day creates on either side | |
| Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver | |
| In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; | |
| High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, | 75 |
| The silvered flats gleam frostily below, | |
| Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide. | |
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| But crowned in turn by vying seasons three, | |
| Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; | |
| This glory seems to rest immovably,— | 80 |
| The others were too fleet and vanishing; | |
| When the hid tide is at its highest flow, | |
| O’er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snow | |
| With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything. | |
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| The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, | 85 |
| As pale as formal candles lit by day; | |
| Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind; | |
| The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, | |
| Show pearly breakers combing o’er their lee, | |
| White crests as of some just enchanted sea, | 90 |
| Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised midway. | |
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| But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant, | |
| From mid-sea’s prairies green and rolling plains | |
| Drives in his wallowing herds of billows gaunt, | |
| And the roused Charles remembers in his veins | 95 |
| Old Ocean’s blood and snaps his gyves of frost, | |
| That tyrannous silence on the shores is tost | |
| In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation reigns. * * * * * | |
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