Hence in a season of calm weather Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither And see the Children sport upon the shore, Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! As to the tabor's sound! We, in thought, will join your throng, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Strength in what remains behind; Which having been must ever be; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, To live beneath your more habitual sway: I love the brooks which down their channels fret The clouds that gather round the setting sun That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; THE MARSHES OF GLYNN Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitter ness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast, sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark: So: Affable live oak, leaning low, Thus with your favor soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample the marsh and the sea and the sky! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main. Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: About and about through the intricate channels that flow |