Curl slow, and plunge forever in.
Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow, | Against the beach's yellow zone, From glow to gloom the hillsides shift Their plumps of orchard-trees arow, Their lakes of rye that wave and flow, Their snowy whiteweed's summer drift.
Doubtful at first and far away, The moon-flood creeps more wide and wide;
Up a ridged beach of cloudy gray, Curved round the east as round a bay, It slips and spreads its gradual tide.
Then suddenly, in lurid mood,
And, as we watch those canvas towers That lean along the horizon's rim, "Sail on," I'll say; "may sunniest hours
Convoy you from this land of ours, Since from my side you bear not him!"
For years thrice three, wise Horace said, A poem rare let silence bind; And love may ripen in the shade, Like ours, for nine long seasons laid In deepest arches of the mind.
Come back! Not ours the Old World's good,
The Old World's ill, thank God, not
These nourish not like homelier glows Or waterings of familiar skies, And nature fairer blooms bestows On the heaped hush of wintry snows,
The moon looms large o'er town and In pastures dear to childhood's eyes,
And scorned to have her sweet caprices Strait-waistcoated in you or me.
I, who take root and firmly cling, Thought fixedness the only thing; Why Nature made the butterflies, (Those dreams of wings that float and hover
At noon the slumberous poppies over,) Was something hidden from mine eyes,
Till once, upon a rock's brown bosom, Bright as a thorny cactus-blossom, I saw a butterfly at rest;
Then first of both I felt the beauty; The airy whim, the grim-set duty, Each from the other took its best.
Clearer it grew than winter sky That Nature still had reasons why; And, shifting sudden as a breeze, My fancy found no satisfaction, No antithetic sweet attraction, So great as in the Nomades.
Scythians, with Nature not at strife, Light Arabs of our complex life, They build no houses, plant no mills To utilize Time's sliding river, Content that it flow waste forever, If they, like it, may have their wills.
An hour they pitch their shifting tents In thoughts, in feelings, and events; Beneath the palm-trees, on the grass, They sing, they dance, make love, and chatter,
Vex the grim temples with their clatter, And make Truth's fount their lookingglass.
A picnic life; from love to love, From faith to faith they lightly move, And yet, hard-eyed philosopher, The flightiest maid that ever hovered To me your thought-webs fine discov- ered,
No lens to see them through like her.
So witchingly her finger-tips To Wisdom, as away she trips, She kisses, waves such sweet farewells To Duty, as she laughs "To-morrow! " That both from that mad contrast bor-
A perfectness found nowhere else.
| The beach-bird on its pearly verge Follows and flies the whispering surge, While, in his tent, the rock-stayed shell Awaits the flood's star-timed vibrations, And both, the flutter and the patience, The sauntering poet loves them well.
Fulfil so much of God's decree As works its problem out in thee, Nor dream that in thy breast alone The conscience of the changeful seasons, The Will that in the planets reasons With space-wide logic, has its throne.
Thy virtue makes not vice of mine, Unlike, but none the less divine; Thy toil adorns, not chides, my play; Nature of sameness is so chary, With such wild whim the freakish fairy Picks presents for the christening-day.
A PRESENCE both by night and day, That made my life seem just begun, Yet scarce a presence, rather say The warning aureole of one. And yet I felt it everywhere; Walked I the woodland's aisles along, It seemed to brush me with its hair; Bathed I, I heard a mermaid's song.
How sweet it was! A buttercup Could hold for me a day's delight, A bird could lift my fancy up To ether free from cloud or blight.
Who was the nymph? Nay, I will see, Methought, and I will know her near; If such, divined, her charm can be, Seen and possessed, how triply dear!
So every magic art I tried,
And spells as numberless as sand, Until, one evening, by my side I saw her glowing fulness stand.
I turned to clasp her, but "Farewell," Parting she sighed, "we meet no more; Not by my hand the curtain fell That leaves you conscious, wise, and poor.
Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, And under all a deep, dull roar, Dying and swelling, forevermore, Rock and moan and roar alone, And the dread of some nameless thing unknown,
These make Appledore.
These make Appledore by night: Then there are monsters left and right; Every rock is a different monster; All you have read of, fancied, dreamed, When you waked at night because you screamed,
There they lie for half a mile, Jumbled together in a pile,
And (though you know they never once stir),
If you look long, they seem to
Just as plainly as plain can be,
All this you would scarcely comprehend, Should you see the isle on a sunny day; Then it is simple enough in its way, Two rocky bulges, one at each end, With a smaller bulge and a hollow be- tween ;
Patches of whortleberry and bay; Accidents of open green,
Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray,
Like graveyards for ages deserted; a few Unsocial thistles; an elder or two, Foamed over with blossoms white as spray;
And on the whole island never a tree Save a score of sumachs, high as your knee,
That crouch in hollows where they may, (The cellars where once stood a village, men say,)
Huddling for warmth, and never grew Tall enough for a peep at the sea; A general dazzle of open blue; A breeze always blowing and playing
With the bow of the ribbon round your hat;
A score of sheep that do nothing but
Up or down at you everywhere; Three or four cattle that chew the cud Lying about in a listless despair; A medrick that makes you look over- head
With short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey,
And, dropping straight and swift as lead,
Splits the water with sudden thud ;- This is Appledore by day.
A common island, you will say; But stay a moment: only climb Up to the highest rock of the isle,
Crushing and crowding, wading and Stand there alone for a little while,
And with gentle approaches it grows sublime,
Where you can hear them snort and Dilating slowly as you win
A sense from the silence to take it in.
So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, The granite beneath you so savagely bare,
You well might think you were looking down
From some sky-silenced mountain's
Whose far-down pines are wont to tear Locks of wool from the topmost cloud. Only be sure you go alone,
For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud, And never yet has backward thrown Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd; To more than one was never shown That awful front, nor is it fit
O'er which, through color's dreamiest grades,
The yellow sunbeams pause and creep! Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray, Now shadows to a filmy blue, Tries one, tries all, and will not stay, But flits from opal hue to hue, And runs through every tenderest range Of change that seems not to be change, So rare the sweep, so nice the art, That lays no stress on any part, But shifts and lingers and persuades ; So soft that sun-brush in the west, That asks no costlier pigments' aids, But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints,
That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed Indifferent of worst or best,
Until the self-approving pit Enjoy the gust of its own wit
In babbling plaudits cheaply loud; She hides her mountains and her sea From the harriers of scenery,
Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay,
Mouthing and mumbling the dying day.
Trust me, 't is something to be cast Face to face with one's Self at last, To be taken out of the fuss and strife, The endless clatter of plate and knife, The bore of books and the bores of the street,
From the singular mess we agree to call Life,
Where that is best which the most fools vote is,
And to be set down on one's own two feet
So nigh to the great warm heart of God, You almost seem to feel it beat Down from the sunshine and up from the sod;
To be compelled, as it were, to notice All the beautiful changes and chances Through which the landscape flits and glances,
And to see how the face of common day Is written all over with tender histories, When you study it that intenser way In which a lover looks at his mistress.
Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and
And gracious preludings of tints, Where all seems fixed, yet all evades, And indefinably pervades
Perpetual movement with perpetual rest!
Away northeast is Boone Island light; You might mistake it for a ship, Only it stands too plumb upright, And like the others does not slip Behind the sea's unsteady brink; Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip Upon it a moment, 't will suddenly sink, Levelled and lost in the darkened main, Till the sun builds it suddenly up again, As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp. On the mainland you see a misty camp Of mountains pitched tumultuously: That one looming so long and large Is Saddleback, and that point you see Over yon low and rounded marge, Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe Laid over his breast, is Ossipee; That shadow there may be Kearsarge; That must be Great Haystack; I love these names,
Wherewith the lonely farmer tames Nature to mute companionship With his own mind's domestic mood, And strives the surly world to clip In the arms of familiar habitude.
Till now you dreamed not what could 'T is well he could not contrive to make
With a bit of rock and a ray of sun; But look, how fade the lights and shades Of keen bare edge and crevice deep! How doubtfully it fades and fades, And glows again, yon craggy steep,
A Saxon of Agamenticus: He glowers there to the north of us, Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze, Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to take
The white man's baptism or his ways.
Him first on shore the coaster divines Through the early gray, and sees him shake
The morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines;
Him first the skipper makes out in the west,
Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous,
Plashing with orange the palpitant lines Of mutable billow, crest after crest, And murmurs Agamenticus! As if it were the name of a saint. But is that a mountain playing cloud, Or a cloud playing mountain, just there, so faint?
Look along over the low right shoulder Of Agamenticus into that crowd Of brassy thunderheads behind it ; Now you have caught it, but, ere you are older
By half an hour, you will lose it and find it
A score of times; while you look 't is gone,
And, just as you 've given it up, anon It is there again, till your weary eyes Fancy they see it waver and rise, With its brother clouds; it is Agio- chook,
There if you seek not, and gone if you look,
Ninety miles off as the eagle flies.
Eastward as far as the eye can see, Still eastward, eastward, endlessly, The sparkle and tremor of purple sea That rises before you, a flickering hill, On and on to the shut of the sky, And beyond, you fancy it sloping until The same multitudinous throb and thrill That vibrate under your dizzy eye
In ripples of orange and pink are sent Where the poppied sails doze on the yard,
And the clumsy junk and proa lie Sunk deep with precious woods and nard,
Mid the palmy isles of the Orient. Those leaning towers of clouded white On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean, That shorten and shorten out of sight, Yet seem on the selfsame spot to stay, Receding with a motionless motion, Fading to dubious films of gray, Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly,
Will rise again, the great world under, First films, then towers, then highheaped clouds,
Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds, That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder, Crushing the violet wave to spray Past some low headland of Cathay ;— What was that sigh which seemed so
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