Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 2 | Page 7

day
Was warm as June's; and save that snow
Flecked the low
mountains far away,
And that the vernal-seeming breeze
Mocked
faded grass and leafless trees,
I might have dreamed of summer as I
lay,
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play.
V.
Since then, the winter blasts have piled
The white pagodas of the
snow
On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild,

Yon river, in its
overflow
Of spring-time rain and sun, set free,
Crashed with its ices
to the sea;
And over these gray fields, then green and gold,
The

summer corn has waved, the thunder's organ rolled.
VI.
Rich gift of God! A year of time
What pomp of rise and shut of
day,
What hues wherewith our Northern clime
Makes autumn's
dropping woodlands gay,
What airs outblown from ferny dells,
And
clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells,
What songs of brooks and birds,
what fruits and flowers,
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its
round been ours!
VII.
I know not how, in other lands,
The changing seasons come
and go;
What splendors fall on Syrian sands,
What purple lights on
Alpine snow!
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits
On Venice at her
watery gates;
A dream alone to me is Arno's 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