NANTASKET.

FAIR is thy face, Nantasket, And fair thy curving shores,The peering spires of villages,

The boatman's dipping oars, The lonely ledge of Minot,

Beside the brook the gentian Closes its fringèd eyes, And waits the later glory

Of October's yellow skies.

Within the sea-washed meadow The wild grape climbs the wall,

light,

And sets his perilous beacon,
A star in the stormiest night.

Over thy vast sea highway,
The great ships slide from sight,
And flocks of wingèd phantoms
Flit by, like birds in flight.
Over the toppling sea-wall

The home-bound dories float, And I watch the patient fisherman Bend in his anchored boat.

I am alone with Nature;
With the glad September day.
The leaning hills above me
With golden-rod are gay,
Across the fields of ether
Flit butterflies at play,
And cones of garnet sumach
Glow down the country way.

The autumn dandelion

Along the roadside burns; Down from the lichened boulders Quiver the plumèd ferns; The cream-white silk of the milkweed Floats from its sea-green pod; Out from the mossy rock-seams Flashes the golden-rod.

The woodbine's scarlet banners
Flaunt from their towers of stone;
The wan, wild morning-glory
Dies by the road alone;

By the hill-path to the seaside
Wave myriad azure bells;

And over the grassy ramparts lean
The milky immortelles.

Hosts of gold-hearted daisies
Nod by the wayside bars;

The tangled thicket of green is set
With the aster's purple stars;

The brown burs softly fall. I see the tall reeds shiver Beside the salt sea marge; I see the sea-bird glimmer, Far out on airy barge.

I hear in the groves of Hingham
The friendly caw of the crow,
Till I sit again in Wachusett's woods,
In August's sumptuous glow.
The tiny boom of the beetle

Strikes the shining rocks below;
The gauzy oar of the dragon-fly
Is beating to and fro.

As the lovely ghost of the thistle
Goes sailing softly by;
Glad in its second summer
Hums the awakened fly;
The cumulate cry of the cricket
Pierces the amber noon;

In from the vast sea-spaces comes
The clear call of the loon;
Over and through it all I hear
Ocean's pervasive rune.

Against the warm sea-beaches

Rush the wavelets' eager lips;
Away o'er the sapphire reaches
Move on the stately ships.
Peace floats on all their pennons,
Sailing silently the main,
As if never human anguish,

As if never human pain,

Sought the healing draught of Lethe Beyond the gleaming plain.

Fair is the earth behind me,
Vast is the sea before,
Away through the misty dimness
Glimmers a further shore.
It is no realm enchanted,

It cannot be more fair

Than this nook of Nature's Kingdom With its spell of space and air.

From her to me, from me to her, What passed so subtly, stealthily? As rose to rose, that by it blows,

Its interchanged aroma flings; Or wake to sound of one sweet note The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this? — but this,

That influent; as within me dwelt Her life; mine too within her breast, Her brain, her every limb, she felt. We sat; while o'er and in us, more And more, a power unknown prevailed,

Inhaling and inhaled,- and still

'Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this; and passed

I passed; and know not to this day If gold or jet her girlish hair

If black, or brown, or lucid-gray Her eye's young glance. The fickle

chance

That joined us yet may join again; But I no face again could greet

As hers, whose life was in me then.

As unsuspecting mere a maid

As fresh in maidhood's bloomiest bloom

In casual second-class did e'er

By casual youth her seat assume;

In me and her

- sensation strange! The lily grew to pendent head; To vernal airs the mossy bank Its sheeny primrose spangles spread; In roof o'er roof of shade sun-proof Did cedar strong itself outclimb; And altitude of aloe proud

Aspire in floral crown sublime;

Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies;

Big bees their burly bodies swung; Rooks roused with civic din the elms; And lark its wild reveillé rung; In Libyan dell the light gazelle,

The leopard lithe in Indian glade, And dolphin, brightening tropic seas, In us were living, leapt and played.

Their shells did slow crustacea build; Their gilded skins did snakes re

new;

While mightier spines for loftier kind Their types in amplest limbs outgrew;

Yea, close comprest in human breast, What moss, and tree, and livelier thing