| |
(From Ranolf and Amohia)
AND thus o’er many a mountain wood-entangled, | |
| And stony plain of stunted fern that hides | |
| The bright-green oily anise; and hillsides | |
| And valleys, where its dense luxuriance balks | |
| With interclinging fronds and tough red stalks | 5 |
| The traveller’s hard-fought path, they took their way. | |
| Sometimes they traversed, half the dreary day, | |
| A deep-glenned wilderness all dark and dank | |
| With trees, whence tattered and dishevelled dangled | |
| Pale streaming strips of mosses long and lank; | 10 |
| Where at each second step of tedious toil | |
| On perfect forms of fallen trunks they tread, | |
| And ankle-deep sink in their yielding bed,— | |
| Moss-covered rottenness long turned to soil,— | |
| Until, ascending ever in the drear | 15 |
| Dumb gloom forlorn, a sudden rushing sound | |
| Of pattering rain strikes freshly on the ear,— | |
| ’T is but the breeze that up so high has found | |
| Amid the rattling leaves a free career! | |
| To the soft, mighty, sea-like roar they list: | 20 |
| Or else ’t is calm; the gloom itself is gone; | |
| And all is airiness and light-filled mist, | |
| As on the open mountain-side, so lone | |
| And lofty, freely breathing they emerge. | |
| And sometimes through a league-long swamp they urge | 25 |
| Slow progress, dragging through foot-sucking slush | |
| Their weary limbs, red-painted to the knees | |
| In pap rust-stained by iron or seeding rush; | |
| But soon through limpid brilliant streams that travel | |
| With murmuring, momentary-gleaming foam | 30 |
| That flits and flashes over sun-warmed gravel | |
| They wade, and laughing wash that unctuous loam | |
| Off blood-stained limbs now clean beyond all cavil | |
| And start refreshed new road-knots to unravel. | |
| And what delight, at length, that glimpse instils, | 35 |
| That wedge-shaped opening in the wooded hills, | |
| Which, like a cup, the far-off ocean fills! | |
| Anon they skirt the winding wild sea-shore; | |
| From woody crag or ferny bluff admiring | |
| The dim-bright beautiful blue bloom it wore, | 40 |
| That still Immensity, that placid Ocean, | |
| With all its thousand leagues of level calm, | |
| Tremendously serene; he, fancying more | |
| Than feeling, for tired spirits peace-desiring, | |
| With the world-fret and life’s low fever sore, | 45 |
| Weary and worn with turmoil and emotion, | |
| The soothing might of its majestic balm. | |
| Or to the beach descending, with joined hands | |
| They pace the firm tide-saturated sands | |
| Whitening beneath their footpress as they pass; | 50 |
| And from that fresh and tender marble floor | |
| So glossy-shining in the morning sun, | |
| Watch the broad billows at their chase untiring,— | |
| How they come rolling on, in rougher weather,— | |
| How in long lines they swell and link together, | 55 |
| Till, as their watery walls they grandly lift, | |
| Their level crests extending sideways, swift | |
| Shoot over into headlong roofs of glass | |
| Cylindric, thundering as they curl and run | |
| And close, down-rushing to a weltering dance | 60 |
| Of foam that slides along the smooth expanse, | |
| Nor seldom, in a streaked and creamy sheet | |
| Comes unexpected hissing round their feet, | |
| While with great leaps and hurry-skurry fleet, | |
| His louder laughter mixed with hers so sweet, | 65 |
| Each tries to stop the other’s quick retreat. | |
| Or else on sands that, white and loose, give way | |
| At every step, they toil, till labor-sped | |
| Their limbs in the noon-loneliness they lay | |
| On that hot, soft, yet unelastic bed, | 70 |
| With brittle seaweed, pink and black, o’erstrewn, | |
| And wrecks of many a forest-growth upthrown, | |
| Bare stem and barkless branches, clean, sea-bleached, | |
| Milk-white, or stringy logs deep-red as wine, | |
| Their ends ground smooth against a thousand rocks, | 75 |
| Dead-heavy, soaked with penetrating brine; | |
| Or bolted fragment of some ship storm-breached | |
| And shattered,—all with barnacles o’ergrown, | |
| Gray-crusted thick with hollow-coned small shells,— | |
| So silent in the sunshine still and lone, | 80 |
| So reticent of what it sadly tells. | |
| |
