Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 4

mattock in the mine,
The axe-stroke in the dell,
The
clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuit chapel bell!
I see the swarthy trappers come
From Mississippi's springs;
And
war-chiefs with their painted brows,
And crests of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe,
The steamer smokes and
raves;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves.
I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be;
The first low wash
of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments of empire here
Are plastic yet and warm;
The chaos
of a mighty world
Is rounding into form!
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find,--

The raw material of a State,
Its muscle and its mind!
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train

Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain.

The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindling on its way;
And
California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray!
Then blessings on thy eagle quill,
As, wandering far and wide,
I
thank thee for this twilight dream
And Fancy's airy ride!
Yet, welcomer than regal plumes,
Which Western trappers find,

Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance sown,
Like feathers on the
wind.
Thy symbol be the mountain-bird,
Whose glistening quill I hold;

Thy home the ample air of hope,
And memory's sunset gold!
In thee, let joy with duty join,
And strength unite with love,
The
eagle's pinions folding round
The warm heart of the dove!
So, when in darkness sleeps the vale
Where still the blind bird clings

The sunshine of the upper sky
Shall glitter on thy wings!
1849.
APRIL.
"The spring comes slowly up this way."
Christabel.
'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird
In the wind-shaken
elm or the maple is heard;
For green meadow-grasses wide levels of
snow,
And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow;
Where
wind-flower and violet, amber and white,
On south-sloping
brooksides should smile in the light,
O'er the cold winter-beds of their
late-waking roots
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots;

And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps,
Round the boles of
the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps,
Unkissed of the sunshine,
unbaptized of showers,
With buds scarcely swelled, which should
burst into flowers We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!


For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth;
For the yearly
evangel thou bearest from God,
Resurrection and life to the graves of
the sod!
Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased
The
wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast,
Raw and chill, as if
winnowed through ices and snow,
All the way from the land of the
wild Esquimau,
Until all our dreams of the land of the blest,
Like
that red hunter's, turn to the sunny southwest.
O soul of the
spring-time, its light and its breath,
Bring warmth to this coldness,
bring life to this death;
Renew the great miracle; let us behold
The
stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled,
And Nature, like
Lazarus, rise, as of old!
Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness
has lain,
Revive with the warmth and the brightness again,
And in
blooming of flower and budding of tree
The symbols and types of our
destiny see;
The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole,
And,
as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul!
1852.
PICTURES
I.
Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all
Blue,
stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down
Tranquillity upon the
deep-hushed town,
The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown;

Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine,
And the brimmed
river from its distant fall,
Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude
Of
bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,--
Heralds and prophecies
of sound and sight,
Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light,

Attendant angels to the house of prayer,
With reverent footsteps
keeping pace with mine,--
Once more, through God's great love, with
you I share
A morn of resurrection sweet and fair
As that which
saw, of old, in Palestine,
Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom

From the dark night and winter of the tomb!

2d, 5th mo., 1852.
II.
White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds
Before me;
dust is on the shrunken grass,
And on the trees beneath whose boughs
I pass;
Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky,
Who, glaring on

me with his lidless eye,
While mounting with his dog-star high and
higher
Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds
The burnished quiver
of his shafts of fire.
Between me and the hot fields of his South
A
tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth,
Glimmers and swims
before my dazzled sight,
As if the burning arrows of his ire
Broke
as they fell, and shattered into light;
Yet on my cheek I feel the
western wind,
And hear it telling to the orchard trees,
And to the
faint and flower-forsaken bees,
Tales of fair meadows, green with
constant streams,
And mountains rising blue and cool behind,

Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams,
And starred with
white the virgin's bower is twined.
So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he
fares
Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned,
Even at
noontide, by the cool, sweet airs
Of a serener and a holier land,

Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland.
Breath of the blessed