Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Meschianza
By Thomas Buchanan Read (18221872)
O
How was your quiet startled when
Red Mars made your calm harbor glow
With all the splendors he can show!
That day upon his cherished town,—
That town which in the sylvan wild
He reared and tended like a child?
Who fashioned all your staid retreats,
Groaned then in their celestial seats
With sad offended eyes and ears;
And, had their loving faith allowed,
That day, in mournful spirit bowed,
Each had turned his olive-wand
Into a rod of reprimand.
The sweet south breeze came up the bay,
Fanning the river where it lay
Voiceless, with astonished stare,—
The great sea-drinking Delaware.
With myriad oars, and all in tune,
A swarm of barges moved away,
In all their grand regatta pride,
As bright as in a blue lagune,
When gondolas from shore to shore
Swam round the golden Bucentaur
On a Venetian holiday,
What time the Doge threw in the tide
The ring which made the sea his bride.
Each crowded like a festal lawn,—
Great swimming floors, o’er which were rolled
Cloth of scarlet, green, and gold,
Like tropic isles of flowery light
Unmoored by some enchanter’s might,
O’erflowed with music, floated down
Before the wharf-assembled town.
A thousand light oars flashed and flung
A fairy rainbow where they sprung.
Conjoining with the singers’ voice,
In ecstatic rival trial,
Every instrument of choice,
Mellow flute and silver viol,
Wooed the soft air to rejoice;
Till on wings of splendor met,
Clearer, louder, wilder yet,
Clarion and clarionet,
And the bugle’s sailing tone,
As from lips of tempests blown,
Made the whole wide sky its own,
Shivering with its festal jar
The aerial dome afar.
Winged the swimming pageant down,
Till with one loud crash it dropt,
And the bright flotilla stopt,
Mooring in the bannered port
At the flowery wharves of Sport.
With painted trophies, which proclaimed,
With mottoes wrought in many a line
Around some brave heraldic sign,
That all the splendors here displayed
Were honors to great chieftains paid.
With flying banners overhead,
Where, on a high and central throne,
The two commanders reigned alone:
The admiral, whose powdered hair
Had oft been fanned by ocean air;
The general, whose eye oft sped
O’er fields transfused from green to red,
As if the very plain should wear
The hue his army held so dear,—
Both deeming that the world must bow
Before the awful name of Howe.
And yet a light to mock his art,
To kindle all a poet’s fire,
To waken, madden, and inspire,
Yet leave him mastered and undone,
As faints a taper in the sun,—
Yes, there, in many a beaming row,
Was lit such beauty as might glow
Alone in fabled tourney-rings
Held in those far enchanted scenes
Where all are princesses and queens
And all the jousting knights are kings.