Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

V. Trees: Flowers: Plants

Sunrise: A Hymn of the Marshes

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)

IN my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain

Of the live-oak, the marsh and the main.

The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep.

Upbreathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep.

I have waked, I have come, my belovèd! I might not abide:

I have come ere the dawn, O belovèd! my live-oaks, to hide

In your gospelling glooms—to be

As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh, and the sea my sea.

Tell me, sweet burly-barked man-bodied Tree

That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know

From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?

They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.

Reason ’s not one that weeps.

What logic of greeting lies

Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss

All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss

The vague blackness of night with pattern and plan,

Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,

Oh! rain me down from your darks that contain me

Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me:

Soft down tremors of sweet-within-sweet,

That advise me of more than they bring; repeat

Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought health

From the heaven-side bank of the river of death;

Teach me the terms of silence, preach me

The passion of patience, sift me, impeach me;

And there, oh! there,

As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,

Pray me a myriad prayer.

My gossip, the owl, is it thou

That out of the leaves of the low hanging bough,

As I pass to the beach, art stirred?

Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?

Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea,

Old Chemist, rapt in alchemy.

Distilling silence, lo!

That which our father-age had died to know,

The menstruum that dissolves all matter—thou

Hast found it; for this silence, filling now

The globèd clarity of receiving space,

This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace,

Death, love, sin, sanity,

Must in your silence, clear solution lie.

Too clear! that crystal nothing who ’ll peruse?

The blackest night could bring us brighter news.

Yet precious qualities of silence haunt

Round these vast margins, ministrant.

Oh! if thy soul ’s at latter gasp for space,

With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race

Just to be fellowed, when that thou hast found

No man with room or grace enough of bound

To entertain that New thou tell’st, thou art—

’T is here, ’t is here thou canst unhand thy heart

And breathe it freely, and breathe it free

By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty.

The tide ’s at full; the marsh with flooded streams

Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams.

Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies,

A rhapsody of morning stars. The skies

Shine scant with one forked galaxy—

The marsh brags ten; looped on his breast they lie.

Oh! what if a sound should be made!

Oh! what if a bound should be laid

To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring,

To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string!

I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam

Will break as a bubble o’erblown in a dream,

Yon dome of too tenuous tissues of space and of night,

Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light,

Oversated with beauty and silence, will seem

But a bubble that broke in a dream,

If a bound of degree to this grace be said

Or a sound or a motion made.

But no: it is made; list! somewhere—mystery! where?

In the leaves? in the air?

In my heart? is a motion made:

’T is a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade

In the leaves, ’t is palpable; low multitudinous stirring

Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring,

Have settled, my lord ’s to be looked for; so; they are still;

But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill.

And look where the wild duck sails around the bend of the river;

And look where a passionate shiver

Expectant is bending the blades

Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades;

And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting, are beating

The dark overhead as my heart beats; and steady and free

Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea.

(Run home, little streams,

With your lapful of stars and dreams),

And a sailor is hoisting a-peak;

For list! down the inshore curve of the creek

How merrily flutters the sail,

And lo! in the East! Will the East unveil?

The East is unveiled, the East has confessed

A flush! ’t is dead! ’t is alive! ’t is dead ere the West

Was aware of it! nay, ’t is abiding, ’t is unwithdrawn!

Have a care, sweet Heaven! ’T is Dawn!

Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled:

To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold

Is builded, in shape as a beehive, from out of the sea;

The hive is of gold undazzling; but oh! the Bee,

The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee,

Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee

That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea.

Yet now the dew-drop, now the morning gray

Shall live their little lucid, sober day;

Ere with the Sun their souls exhale away.

Now in each pettiest, personal sphere of dew

The summed morn shines complete as in the blue,

Big dew-drop of all Heaven. With these lit shrines

O’er silvered to the furtherest sea-confines,

The sacramental marsh, one pious plain

Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign

Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild,

Minded of naught but peace and of a Child.

Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure

Of motion, not faster than dateless Olympian leisure

Might pace with unblown ample garments from pleasure to pleasure;

The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling,

Forever revealing, revealing, revealing,

Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise—’t is done!

Good morrow, lord Sun!

With several voice, with ascription one,

The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul

Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll,

Cry good, and past good, and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun!