Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 7

vale,?And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale.
VIII.?Yet, on life's current, he who drifts?Is one with him who rows or sails?And he who wanders widest lifts?No more of beauty's jealous veils?Than he who from his doorway sees?The miracle of flowers and trees,?Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air,?And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer!
IX.?The eye may well be glad that looks?Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall;?But he who sees his native brooks?Laugh in the sun, has seen them all.?The marble palaces of Ind?Rise round him in the snow and wind;?From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles,?And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles.
X.?And thus it is my fancy blends?The near at hand and far and rare;?And while the same horizon bends?Above the silver-sprinkled hair?Which flashed the light of morning skies?On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes,?Within its round of sea and sky and field,?Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed.
XI.?And thus the sick man on his bed,?The toiler to his task-work bound,?Behold their prison-walls outspread,?Their clipped horizon widen round!?While freedom-giving fancy waits,?Like Peter's angel at the gates,?The power is theirs to baffle care and pain,?To bring the lost world back, and make it theirs again!
XII.?What lack of goodly company,?When masters of the ancient lyre?Obey my call, and trace for me?Their words of mingled tears and fire!?I talk with Bacon, grave and wise,?I read the world with Pascal's eyes;?And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere,?And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near.
XIII.?Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say,
"In vain the human heart we mock;?Bring living guests who love the day,?Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock!?The herbs we share with flesh and blood?Are better than ambrosial food?With laurelled shades." I grant it, nothing loath,?But doubly blest is he who can partake of both.
XIV.?He who might Plato's banquet grace,?Have I not seen before me sit,?And watched his puritanic face,?With more than Eastern wisdom lit??Shrewd mystic! who, upon the back?Of his Poor Richard's Almanac,?Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream,?Links Manu's age of thought to Fulton's age of steam!
XV.?Here too, of answering love secure,?Have I not welcomed to my hearth?The gentle pilgrim troubadour,?Whose songs have girdled half the earth;?Whose pages, like the magic mat?Whereon the Eastern lover sat,?Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple vines,?And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's mountain pines!
XVI.?And he, who to the lettered wealth?Of ages adds the lore unpriced,?The wisdom and the moral health,?The ethics of the school of Christ;?The statesman to his holy trust,?As the Athenian archon, just,?Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone,?Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own?
XVII.?What greetings smile, what farewells wave,?What loved ones enter and depart!?The good, the beautiful, the brave,?The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart!?How conscious seems the frozen sod?And beechen slope whereon they trod?The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends?Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends.
XVIII.?Then ask not why to these bleak hills?I cling, as clings the tufted moss,?To bear the winter's lingering chills,?The mocking spring's perpetual loss.?I dream of lands where summer smiles,?And soft winds blow from spicy isles,?But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet,?Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet!
XIX.?At times I long for gentler skies,?And bathe in dreams of softer air,?But homesick tears would fill the eyes?That saw the Cross without the Bear.?The pine must whisper to the palm,?The north-wind break the tropic calm;?And with the dreamy languor of the Line,?The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join.
XX.?Better to stem with heart and hand?The roaring tide of life, than lie,?Unmindful, on its flowery strand,?Of God's occasions drifting by?Better with naked nerve to bear?The needles of this goading air,?Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego?The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know.
XXI.?Home of my heart! to me more fair?Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,?The painted, shingly town-house where?The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!?The simple roof where prayer is made,?Than Gothic groin and colonnade;?The living temple of the heart of man,?Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan!
XXII.?More dear thy equal village schools,?Where rich and poor the Bible read,?Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules,?And Learning wears the chains of Creed;?Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in?The scattered sheaves of home and kin,?Than the mad license ushering Lenten pains,?Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance in chains.
XXIII.?And sweet homes nestle in these dales,?And perch along these wooded swells;?And, blest beyond Arcadian vales,?They hear the sound of Sabbath bells!?Here dwells no perfect man sublime,?Nor woman winged before her time,?But with the faults and follies of the race,?Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place.
XXIV.?Here manhood struggles for the sake?Of mother, sister, daughter, wife,?The graces and the loves which make?The music of the march of life;?And woman, in her daily round?Of duty, walks on holy ground.?No unpaid menial tills