For here not long is solitude secure,Nor Fantasy left vacant to her spell.Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade,Rippled with western winds, the dusty Tramp,Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond,Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 210And munch an unearned meal. I cannot helpLiking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman,Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow warm,Himself his large estate and only charge,To be the guest of haystack or of hedge,Nobly superior to the household gearThat forfeits us our privilege of nature.I bait him with my match-box and my pouch,Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke,His equal now, divinely unemployed. 220Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man,Some secret league with wild wood-wandering things;He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl,By right of birth exonerate from toil,Who levies rent from us his tenants all,And serves the state by merely being. HereThe Scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat,And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan,Winnow the heat from out his dank gray hair,—A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 230Whose feet are known to all the populous ways,And many men and manners he hath seen,Not without fruit of solitary thought.He, as the habit is of lonely men,—Unused to try the temper of their mindIn fence with others,—positive and shy,Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech,Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk.Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife,And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, 240Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind,In motion set obsequious to his wheel,And in its quality not much unlike.
Nor wants my tree more punctual visitors.The children, they who are the only rich,Creating for the moment, and possessingWhate'er they choose to feign,—for still with themKind Fancy plays the fairy godmother,Strewing their lives with cheap materialFor wingèd horses and Aladdin's lamps, 250Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch profaneTo dead leaves disenchanted,—long agoBetween the branches of the tree fixed seats,Making an o'erturned box their table. OftThe shrilling girls sit here between school hours,And play atWhat's my thought like?while the boys,With whom the age chivalric ever bides,Pricked on by knightly spur of female eyes,Climb high to swing and shout on perilous boughs,Or, from the willow's armory equipped 260With musket dumb, green banner, edgeless sword,Make good the rampart of their tree-redoubt'Gainst eager British storming from below,And keep alive the tale of Bunker's Hill.
Here, too, the men that mend our village ways,Vexing Macadam's ghost with pounded slate,Their nooning take; much noisy talk they spendOn horses and their ills; and, as John BullTells of Lord This or That, who was his friend,So these make boast of intimacies long 270With famous teams, and add large estimates,By competition swelled from mouth to mouth.Of how much they could draw, till one, ill pleasedTo have his legend overbid, retorts:'You take and stretch truck-horses in a stringFrom here to Long Wharf end, one thing I know,Not heavy neither, they could never draw,—Ensign's long bow!' Then laughter loud and long.So they in their leaf-shadowed microcosmImage the larger world; for wheresoe'er 280Ten men are gathered, the observant eyeWill find mankind in little, as the starsGlide up and set, and all the heavens revolveIn the small welkin of a drop of dew.
I love to enter pleasure by a postern,Not the broad popular gate that gulps the mob;To find my theatres in roadside nooks,Where men are actors, and suspect it not;Where Nature all unconscious works her will,And every passion moves with easy gait, 290Unhampered by the buskin or the train.Hating the crowd, where we gregarious menLead lonely lives, I love society,Nor seldom find the best with simple soulsUnswerved by culture from their native bent,The ground we meet on being primal man,And nearer the deep bases of our lives.
But oh, half heavenly, earthly half, my soul,Canst thou from those late ecstasies descend,Thy lips still wet with the miraculous wine 300That transubstantiates all thy baser stuffTo such divinity that soul and sense,Once more commingled in their source, are lost,—Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar thirstWith the mere dregs and rinsings of the world?Well, if my nature find her pleasure so,I am content, nor need to blush; I takeMy little gift of being clean from God,Not haggling for a better, holding itGood as was ever any in the world, 310My days as good and full of miracle.I pluck my nutriment from any bush,Finding out poison as the first men didBy tasting and then suffering, if I must.Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes it isA leafless wilding shivering by the wall;But I have known when winter barberriesPricked the effeminate palate with surpriseOf savor whose mere harshness seemed divine.
Oh, benediction of the higher mood 320And human-kindness of the lower! for bothI will be grateful while I live, nor questionThe wisdom that hath made us what we are,With such large range as from the ale-house benchCan reach the stars and be with both at home.They tell us we have fallen on prosy days,Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feastWhere gods and heroes took delight of old;But though our lives, moving in one dull roundOf repetition infinite, become 330Stale as a newspaper once read, and thoughHistory herself, seen in her workshop, seemTo have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes,Rich with memorial shapes of saint and sage,That pave with splendor the Past's dusky aisles,—Panes that enchant the light of common dayWith colors costly as the blood of kings,Till with ideal hues it edge our thought,—Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts,And man the best of nature, there shall be 340Somewhere contentment for these human hearts,Some freshness, some unused materialFor wonder and for song. I lose myselfIn other ways where solemn guide-posts say,This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose,But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed,For every by-path leads me to my love.
God's passionless reformers, influences,That purify and heal and are not seen,Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how 350Ye make medicinal the wayside weed?I know that sunshine, through whatever rift,How shaped it matters not, upon my wallsPaints discs as perfect-rounded as its source,And, like its antitype, the ray divine,However finding entrance, perfect still,Repeats the image unimpaired of God.
We, who by shipwreck only find the shoresOf divine wisdom, can but kneel at first;Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, 360That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps,The shock and sustenance of solid earth;Inland afar we see what temples gleamThrough immemorial stems of sacred groves,And we conjecture shining shapes therein;Yet for a space we love to wander hereAmong the shells and seaweed of the beach.
So mused I once within my willow-tentOne brave June morning, when the bluff northwest,Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day 370That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins,Brimmed the great cup of heaven with sparkling cheerAnd roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles,Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue,Living and lustrous as a woman's eyesLook once and look no more, with southward curveRan crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hairGlimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold;From blossom-clouded orchards, far awayThe bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows flowed 380With multitudinous pulse of light and shadeAgainst the bases of the southern hills,While here and there a drowsy island rickSlept and its shadow slept; the wooden bridgeThundered, and then was silent; on the roofsThe sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat;Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain,All life washed clean in this high tide of June.
When Persia's sceptre trembled in a handWilted with harem-heats, and all the landWas hovered over by those vulture illsThat snuff decaying empire from afar,Then, with a nature balanced as a star,Dara arose, a shepherd of the hills.
He who had governed fleecy subjects wellMade his own village by the selfsame spellSecure and quiet as a guarded fold;Then, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees 10Under his sway, to neighbor villagesOrder returned, and faith and justice old.
Now when it fortuned that a king more wiseEndued the realm with brain and hands and eyes,He sought on every side men brave and just;And having heard our mountain shepherd's praise,How he refilled the mould of elder days,To Dara gave a satrapy in trust.
So Dara shepherded a province wide,Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more pride 20Than in his crook before; but envy findsMore food in cities than on mountains bare;And the frank sun of natures clear and rareBreeds poisonous fogs in low and marish minds.
Soon it was hissed into the royal ear,That, though wise Dara's province, year by year,Like a great sponge, sucked wealth and plenty up,Yet, when he squeezed it at the king's behest,Some yellow drops, more rich than all the rest,Went to the filling of his private cup. 30
For proof, they said, that, wheresoe'er he went,A chest, beneath whose weight the camel bent,Went with him; and no mortal eye had seenWhat was therein, save only Dara's own;But, when 'twas opened, all his tent was knownTo glow and lighten with heaped jewels' sheen.
The King set forth for Dara's province straight;There, as was fit, outside the city's gate,The viceroy met him with a stately train,And there, with archers circled, close at hand, 40A camel with the chest was seen to stand:The King's brow reddened, for the guilt was plain.
'Open me here,' he cried, 'this treasure-chest!''Twas done; and only a worn shepherd's vestWas found therein. Some blushed and hung the head;Not Dara; open as the sky's blue roofHe stood, and 'O my lord, behold the proofThat I was faithful to my trust,' he said.
'To govern men, lo all the spell I had!'My soul in these rude vestments ever clad 50Still to the unstained past kept true and leal,Still on these plains could breathe her mountain air,And fortune's heaviest gifts serenely bear,Which bend men from their truth and make them reel.
'For ruling wisely I should have small skill,Were I not lord of simple Dara still;That sceptre kept, I could not lose my way.'Strange dew in royal eyes grew round and bright,And strained the throbbing lids; before 'twas nightTwo added provinces blest Dara's sway. 60
The snow had begun in the gloaming,And busily all the nightHad been heaping field and highwayWith a silence deep and white.
Every pine and fir and hemlockWore ermine too dear for an earl,And the poorest twig on the elm-treeWas ridged inch deep with pearl.
From sheds new-roofed with CarraraCame Chanticleer's muffled crow,The stiff rails softened to swan's-down,And still fluttered down the snow.
I stood and watched by the windowThe noiseless work of the sky,And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,Like brown leaves whirling by.
I thought of a mound in sweet AuburnWhere a little headstone stood;How the flakes were folding it gently,As did robins the babes in the wood.
Up spoke our own little Mabel,Saying, 'Father, who makes it snow?'And I told of the good All-fatherWho cares for us here below.
Again I looked at the snow-fall,And thought of the leaden skyThat arched o'er our first great sorrow,When that mound was heaped so high.
I remembered the gradual patienceThat fell from that cloud like snow,Flake by flake, healing and hidingThe scar that renewed our woe.
And again to the child I whispered,'The snow that husheth all,Darling, the merciful FatherAlone can make it fall!'
Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her:And she, kissing back, could not knowThatmykiss was given to her sister,Folded close under deepening snow.
'What fairings will ye that I bring?'Said the King to his daughters three;'For I to Vanity Fair am bound,Now say what shall they be?'
Then up and spake the eldest daughter,That lady tall and grand:'Oh, bring me pearls and diamonds great,And gold rings for my hand.'
Thereafter spake the second daughter,That was both white and red: 10'For me bring silks that will stand alone,And a gold comb for my head.'
Then came the turn of the least daughter,That was whiter than thistle-down,And among the gold of her blithesome hairDim shone the golden crown.
'There came a bird this morning,And sang 'neath my bower eaves,Till I dreamed, as his music made me,"Ask thou for the Singing Leaves."' 20
Then the brow of the King swelled crimsonWith a flush of angry scorn:'Well have ye spoken, my two eldest,And chosen as ye were born;
'But she, like a thing of peasant race,That is happy binding the sheaves;'Then he saw her dead mother in her face,And said, 'Thou shalt have thy leaves.'
He mounted and rode three days and nightsTill he came to Vanity Fair, 30And 'twas easy to buy the gems and the silk,But no Singing Leaves were there.
Then deep in the greenwood rode he,And asked of every tree,'Oh, if you have ever a Singing Leaf,I pray you give it me!'
But the trees all kept their counsel,And never a word said they,Only there sighed from the pine-topsA music of seas far away. 40
Only the pattering aspenMade a sound of growing rain,That fell ever faster and faster,Then faltered to silence again.
'Oh, where shall I find a little foot-pageThat would win both hose and shoon,And will bring to me the Singing LeavesIf they grow under the moon?'
Then lightly turned him Walter the page,By the stirrup as he ran: 50'Now pledge you me the truesome wordOf a king and gentleman,
'That you will give me the first, first thingYou meet at your castle-gate,And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves,Or mine be a traitor's fate.'
The King's head dropt upon his breastA moment, as it might be;'Twill be my dog, he thought, and said,'My faith I plight to thee.' 60
Then Walter took from next his heartA packet small and thin,'Now give you this to the Princess Anne,The Singing Leaves are therein.'
As the King rode in at his castle-gate,A maiden to meet him ran,And 'Welcome, father!' she laughed and criedTogether, the Princess Anne.
'Lo, here the Singing Leaves,' quoth he,'And woe, but they cost me dear!' 70She took the packet, and the smileDeepened down beneath the tear.
It deepened down till it reached her heart,And then gushed up again,And lighted her tears as the sudden sunTransfigures the summer rain.
And the first Leaf, when it was opened,Sang: 'I am Walter the page,And the songs I sing 'neath thy windowAre my only heritage.' 80
And the second Leaf sang: 'But in the landThat is neither on earth nor sea,My lute and I are lords of moreThan thrice this kingdom's fee.'
And the third Leaf sang, 'Be mine! Be mine!'And ever it sang, 'Be mine!'Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter,And said, 'I am thine, thine, thine!'
At the first Leaf she grew pale enough,At the second she turned aside, 90At the third, 'twas as if a lily flushedWith a rose's red heart's tide.
'Good counsel gave the bird,' said she,'I have my hope thrice o'er,For they sing to my very heart,' she said,'And it sings to them evermore.'
She brought to him her beauty and truth,But and broad earldoms three,And he made her queen of the broader landsHe held of his lute in fee. 100
Not always unimpeded can I pray,Nor, pitying saint, thine intercession claim;Too closely clings the burden of the day,And all the mint and anise that I payBut swells my debt and deepens my self-blame.
Shall I less patience have than Thou, who knowThat Thou revisit'st all who wait for thee,Nor only fill'st the unsounded deeps below,But dost refresh with punctual overflowThe rifts where unregarded mosses be?
The drooping seaweed hears, in night abyssed,Far and more far the wave's receding shocks,Nor doubts, for all the darkness and the mist,That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst,And shoreward lead again her foam-fleeced flocks.
For the same wave that rims the Carib shoreWith momentary brede of pearl and gold,Goes hurrying thence to gladden with its roarLorn weeds bound fast on rocks of Labrador,By love divine on one sweet errand rolled.
And, though Thy healing waters far withdraw,I, too, can wait and feed on hope of TheeAnd of the dear recurrence of Thy law,Sure that the parting grace my morning sawAbides its time to come in search of me.
There lay upon the ocean's shoreWhat once a tortoise served to cover;A year and more, with rush and roar,The surf had rolled it over,Had played with it, and flung it by,As wind and weather might decide it,Then tossed it high where sand-drifts dryCheap burial might provide it.
It rested there to bleach or tan,The rains had soaked, the suns had burned it;With many a ban the fishermanHad stumbled o'er and spurned it;And there the fisher-girl would stay,Conjecturing with her brotherHow in their play the poor estrayMight serve some use or other.
So there it lay, through wet and dryAs empty as the last new sonnet,Till by and by came Mercury,And, having mused upon it,'Why, here,' cried he, 'the thing of thingsIn shape, material, and dimension!Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,A wonderful invention!'
So said, so done; the chords he strained,And, as his fingers o'er them hovered,The shell disdained a soul had gained,The lyre had been discovered.O empty world that round us lies,Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken,Brought we but eyes like Mercury's,In thee what songs should waken!
This is the midnight of the century,—hark!Through aisle and arch of Godminster have goneTwelve throbs that tolled the zenith of the dark,And mornward now the starry hands move on;'Mornward!' the angelic watchers say,'Passed is the sorest trial;No plot of man can stayThe hand upon the dial;Night is the dark stem of the lily Day.'
If we, who watched in valleys here below,Toward streaks, misdeemed of morn, our faces turnedWhen volcan glares set all the east aglow,We are not poorer that we wept and yearned;Though earth swing wide from God's intent,And though no man nor nationWill move with full consentIn heavenly gravitation,Yet by one Sun is every orbit bent.
Though old the thought and oft exprest,'Tis his at last who says it best,—I'll try my fortune with the rest.
Life is a leaf of paper whiteWhereon each one of us may writeHis word or two, and then comes night.
'Lo, time and space enough,' we cry,'To write an epic!' so we tryOur nibs upon the edge, and die.
Muse not which way the pen to hold,Luck hates the slow and loves the bold,Soon come the darkness and the cold.
Greatly begin! though thou have timeBut for a line, be that sublime,—Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
Ah, with what lofty hope we came!But we forget it, dream of fame,And scrawl, as I do here, a name.
The dandelions and buttercupsGild all the lawn; the drowsy beeStumbles among the clover-tops,And summer sweetens all but me:Away, unfruitful lore of books,For whose vain idiom we rejectThe soul's more native dialect,Aliens among the birds and brooks,Dull to interpret or conceiveWhat gospels lost the woods retrieve! 10Away, ye critics, city-bred,Who springes set of thus and so,And in the first man's footsteps tread,Like those who toil through drifted snow!Away, my poets, whose sweet spellCan make a garden of a cell!I need ye not, for I to-dayWill make one long sweet verse of play.
Snap, chord of manhood's tenser strain!To-day I will be a boy again; 20The mind's pursuing element,Like a bow slackened and unbent,In some dark corner shall be leant.The robin sings, as of old, from the limb!The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush!Through the dim arbor, himself more dim,Silently hops the hermit-thrush,The withered leaves keep dumb for him;The irreverent buccaneering beeHath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floorWith haste-dropt gold from shrine to door;There, as of yore,The rich, milk-tingeing buttercupIts tiny polished urn holds up,Filled with ripe summer to the edge,The sun in his own wine to pledge;And our tall elm, this hundredth yearDoge of our leafy Venice here,Who, with an annual ring, doth wed 40The blue Adriatic overhead,Shadows with his palatial massThe deep canals of flowing grass.
O unestrangèd birds and bees!O face of Nature always true!O never-unsympathizing trees!O never-rejecting roof of blue,Whose rash disherison never fallsOn us unthinking prodigals,Yet who convictest all our ill, 50So grand and unappeasable!Methinks my heart from each of thesePlucks part of childhood back again,Long there imprisoned, as the breezeDoth every hidden odor seizeOf wood and water, hill and plain:Once more am I admitted peerIn the upper house of Nature here,And feel through all my pulses runThe royal blood of wind and sun. 60
Upon these elm-arched solitudesNo hum of neighbor toil intrudes;The only hammer that I hearIs wielded by the woodpecker,The single noisy calling hisIn all our leaf-hid Sybaris;The good old time, close-hidden here,Persists, a loyal cavalier,While Roundheads prim, with point of fox,Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; 70Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast,Insults thy statues, royal Past;Myself too prone the axe to wield,I touch the silver side of the shieldWith lance reversed, and challenge peace,A willing convert of the trees.
How chanced it that so long I tostA cable's length from this rich coast,With foolish anchors hugging closeThe beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, 80Nor had the wit to wreck beforeOn this enchanted island's shore,Whither the current of the sea,With wiser drift, persuaded me?
Oh, might we but of such rare daysBuild up the spirit's dwelling-place!A temple of so Parian stoneWould brook a marble god alone,The statue of a perfect life,Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife. 90Alas! though such felicityIn our vext world here may not be,Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hutShows stones which old religion cutWith text inspired, or mystic signOf the Eternal and Divine,Torn from the consecration deepOf some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep,So, from the ruins of this dayCrumbling in golden dust away, 100The soul one gracious block may draw,Carved with, some fragment of the law,Which, set in life's prosaic wall,Old benedictions may recall,And lure some nunlike thoughts to takeTheir dwelling here for memory's sake.
He came to Florence long ago,And painted here these walls, that shoneFor Raphael and for Angelo,With secrets deeper than his own,Then shrank into the dark again,And died, we know not how or when.
The shadows deepened, and I turnedHalf sadly from the fresco grand;'And is this,' mused I, 'all ye earned,High-vaulted brain and cunning hand,That ye to greater men could teachThe skill yourselves could never reach?'
'And who were they,' I mused, 'that wroughtThrough pathless wilds, with labor long,The highways of our daily thought?Who reared those towers of earliest songThat lift us from the crowd to peaceRemote in sunny silences?'
Out clanged the Ave Mary bells,And to my heart this message came:Each clamorous throat among them tellsWhat strong-souled martyrs died in flameTo make it possible that thouShouldst here with brother sinners bow.
Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, weBreathe cheaply in the common air;The dust we trample heedlesslyThrobbed once in saints and heroes rare,Who perished, opening for their raceNew pathways to the commonplace.
Henceforth, when rings the health to thoseWho live in story and in song,O nameless dead, that now repose,Safe in Oblivion's chambers strong,One cup of recognition trueShall silently be drained to you!
My coachman, in the moonlight there,Looks through the side-light of the door;I hear him with his brethren swear,As I could do,—but only more.
Flattening his nose against the pane,He envies me my brilliant lot,Breathes on his aching fists in vain,And dooms me to a place more hot.
He sees me in to supper go,A silken wonder by my side,Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a rowOf flounces, for the door too wide.
He thinks how happy is my arm'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load;And wishes me some dreadful harm,Hearing the merry corks explode.
Meanwhile I inly curse the boreOf hunting still the same old coon,And envy him, outside the door,In golden quiets of the moon.
The winter wind is not so coldAs the bright smile he sees me win,Nor the host's oldest wine so oldAs our poor gabble sour and thin.
I envy him the ungyved pranceWith which his freezing feet he warms,And drag my lady's chains and danceThe galley-slave of dreary forms.
Oh, could he have my share of din,And I his quiet!—past a doubt'Twould still be one man bored within,And just another bored without.
Nay, when, once paid my mortal fee,Some idler on my headstone grimTraces the moss-blurred name, will heThink me the happier, or I him?
Godminster? Is it Fancy's play?I know not, but the wordSings in my heart, nor can I sayWhether 'twas dreamed or heard;Yet fragrant in my mind it clingsAs blossoms after rain,And builds of half-remembered thingsThis vision in my brain.
Through aisles of long-drawn centuriesMy spirit walks in thought,And to that symbol lifts its eyesWhich God's own pity wrought;From Calvary shines the altar's gleam,The Church's East is there,The Ages one great minster seem,That throbs with praise and prayer.
And all the way from Calvary downThe carven pavement showsTheir graves who won the martyr's crownAnd safe in God repose;The saints of many a warring creedWho now in heaven have learnedThat all paths to the Father leadWhere Self the feet have spurned.
And, as the mystic aisles I pace,By aureoled workmen built,Lives ending at the Cross I traceAlike through grace and guilt;One Mary bathes the blessed feetWith ointment from her eyes,With spikenard one, and both are sweet,For both are sacrifice.
Moravian hymn and Roman chantIn one devotion blend,To speak the soul's eternal wantOf Him, the inmost friend;One prayer soars cleansed with martyr fire,One choked with sinner's tears,In heaven both meet in one desire,And God one music hears.
Whilst thus I dream, the bells clash outUpon the Sabbath air,Each seems a hostile faith to shout,A selfish form of prayer:My dream is shattered, yet who knowsBut in that heaven so nearThese discords find harmonious closeIn God's atoning ear?
O chime of sweet Saint Charity,Peal soon that Easter mornWhen Christ for all shall risen be,And in all hearts new-born!That Pentecost when utterance clearTo all men shall be given,When all shall sayMy Brotherhere,And hearMy Sonin heaven!
Who hath not been a poet? Who hath not,With life's new quiver full of wingèd years,Shot at a venture, and then, following on,Stood doubtful at the Parting of the Ways?
There once I stood in dream, and as I paused,Looking this way and that, came forth to meThe figure of a woman veiled, that said,'My name is Duty, turn and follow me;'Something there was that chilled me in her voice;I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in mine, 10As if to be withdrawn, and I exclaimed:'Oh, leave the hot wild heart within my breast!Duty comes soon enough, too soon comes Death;This slippery globe of life whirls of itself,Hasting our youth away into the dark;These senses, quivering with electric heats,Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughsObtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck,Which whistling north-winds line with downy snowSometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, in vain, 20Thither the singing birds no more return.'
Then glowed to me a maiden from the left,With bosom half disclosed, and naked armsMore white and undulant than necks of swans;And all before her steps an influence ranWarm as the whispering South that opens budsAnd swells the laggard sails of Northern May.'I am called Pleasure, come with me!' she said,Then laughed, and shook out sunshine from her hair,Nor only that, but, so it seemed, shook out 30All memory too, and all the moonlit past,Old loves, old aspirations, and old dreams,More beautiful for being old and gone.
So we two went together; downward slopedThe path through yellow meads, or so I dreamed,Yellow with sunshine and young green, but ISaw naught nor heard, shut up in one close joy;I only felt the hand within my own,Transmuting all my blood to golden fire,Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist. 40
Suddenly shrank the hand; suddenly burstA cry that split the torpor of my brain,And as the first sharp thrust of lightning loosensFrom the heaped cloud its rain, loosened my sense:'Save me!' it thrilled; 'oh, hide me! there is Death!Death the divider, the unmerciful,That digs his pitfalls under Love and Youth,And covers Beauty up in the cold ground;Horrible Death! bringer of endless dark;Let him not see me! hide me in thy breast!' 50Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my armsMet only what slipped crumbling down, and fell,A handful of gray ashes, at my feet.
I would have fled, I would have followed backThat pleasant path we came, but all was changed;Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find;Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, I thought,'That way lies Youth, and Wisdom, and all Good;For only by unlearning Wisdom comesAnd climbing backward to diviner Youth; 60What the world teaches profits to the world,What the soul teaches profits to the soul,Which then first stands erect with Godward face,When she lets fall her pack of withered facts,The gleanings of the outward eye and ear,And looks and listens with her finer sense;Nor Truth nor Knowledge cometh from without.'
After long, weary days I stood againAnd waited at the Parting of the Ways;Again the figure of a woman veiled 70Stood forth and beckoned, and I followed now:Down to no bower of roses led the path,But through the streets of towns where chattering ColdHewed wood for fires whose glow was owned and fenced,Where Nakedness wove garments of warm woolNot for itself;—or through the fields it ledWhere Hunger reaped the unattainable grain,Where idleness enforced saw idle lands,Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth,Walled round with paper against God and Man. 80'I cannot look,' I groaned, 'at only these;The heart grows hardened with perpetual wont,And palters with a feigned necessity,Bargaining with itself to be content;Let me behold thy face.'The Form replied:'Men follow Duty, never overtake;Duty nor lifts her veil nor looks behind.'But, as she spake, a loosened lock of hairSlipped from beneath her hood, and I, who lookedTo see it gray and thin, saw amplest gold; 90Not that dull metal dug from sordid earth,But such as the retiring sunset floodLeaves heaped on bays and capes of island cloud.'O Guide divine,' I prayed, 'although not yetI may repair the virtue which I feelGone out at touch of untuned things and foulWith draughts of Beauty, yet declare how soon!'
'Faithless and faint of heart,' the voice returned,'Thou seest no beauty save thou make it first;Man, Woman, Nature each is but a glass 100Where the soul sees the image of herself,Visible echoes, offsprings of herself.But, since thou need'st assurance of how soon,Wait till that angel comes who opens all,The reconciler, he who lifts the veil,The reuniter, the rest-bringer, Death.'
I waited, and methought he came; but how,Or in what shape, I doubted, for no sign,By touch or mark, he gave me as he passed;Only I knew a lily that I held 110Snapt short below the head and shrivelled up;Then turned my Guide and looked at me unveiled,And I beheld no face of matron stern,But that enchantment I had followed erst,Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain,Heightened and chastened by a household charm;She smiled, and 'Which is fairer,' said her eyes,'The hag's unreal Florimel or mine?'
When I was a beggarly boyAnd lived in a cellar damp,I had not a friend nor a toy,But I had Aladdin's lamp;When I could not sleep for the cold,I had fire enough in my brain,And builded, with roofs of gold,My beautiful castles in Spain!
Since then I have toiled day and night,I have money and power good store,But I'd give all my lamps of silver brightFor the one that is mine no more;Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,You gave, and may snatch again;I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,For I own no more castles in Spain!
Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sandFrom life's still-emptying globe away,Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand,And stood upon the impoverished land,Watching the steamer down the bay.
I held the token which you gave,While slowly the smoke-pennon curledO'er the vague rim 'tween sky and wave,And shut the distance like a grave,Leaving me in the colder world; 10
The old, worn world of hurry and heat,The young, fresh world of thought and scope;While you, where beckoning billows fleetClimb far sky-beaches still and sweet,Sank wavering down the ocean-slope.
You sought the new world in the old,I found the old world in the new,All that our human hearts can hold,The inward world of deathless mould,The same that Father Adam knew. 20
He needs no ship to cross the tide,Who, in the lives about him, seesFair window-prospects opening wideO'er history's fields on every side,To Ind and Egypt, Rome and Greece.
Whatever moulds of various brainE'er shaped the world to weal or woe,Whatever empires' wax and waneTo him that hath not eyes in vain,Our village-microcosm can show. 30
Come back our ancient walks to tread,Dear haunts of lost or scattered friends,Old Harvard's scholar-factories red,Where song and smoke and laughter spedThe nights to proctor-haunted ends.
Constant are all our former loves,Unchanged the icehouse-girdled pond,Its hemlock glooms, its shadowy coves,Where floats the coot and never moves,Its slopes of long-tamed green beyond. 40
Our old familiars are not laid,Though snapt our wands and sunk our books;They beckon, not to be gainsaid,Where, round broad meads that mowers wade,The Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks.
Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow,From glow to gloom the hillsides shiftTheir plumps of orchard-trees arow,Their lakes of rye that wave and flow,Their snowy whiteweed's summer drift. 50
There have we watched the West unfurlA cloud Byzantium newly born,With flickering spires and domes of pearl,And vapory surfs that crowd and curlInto the sunset's Golden Horn.
There, as the flaming occidentBurned slowly down to ashes gray,Night pitched o'erhead her silent tent,And glimmering gold from Hesper sprentUpon the darkened river lay, 60
Where a twin sky but just beforeDeepened, and double swallows skimmed,And from a visionary shoreHung visioned trees, that more and moreGrew dusk as those above were dimmed.
Then eastward saw we slowly growClear-edged the lines of roof and spire,While great elm-masses blacken slow,And linden-ricks their round heads showAgainst a flush of widening fire. 70
Doubtful at first and far away,The moon-flood creeps more wide and wide;Up a ridged beach of cloudy gray,Curved round the east as round a bay,It slips and spreads its gradual tide.
Then suddenly, in lurid mood,The disk looms large o'er town and fieldAs upon Adam, red like blood,'Tween him and Eden's happy wood,Glared the commissioned angel's shield. 80
Or let us seek the seaside, thereTo wander idly as we list,Whether, on rocky headlands bare,Sharp cedar-horns, like breakers, tearThe trailing fringes of gray mist,
Or whether, under skies full flown,The brightening surfs, with foamy din,Their breeze-caught forelocks backward blown,Against the beach's yellow zoneCurl slow, and plunge forever in. 90
And, as we watch those canvas towersThat lean along the horizon's rim,'Sail on,' I'll say; 'may sunniest hoursConvoy you from this land of ours,Since from my side you bear not him!'
For years thrice three, wise Horace said,A poem rare let silence bind;And love may ripen to the shade,Like ours, for nine long seasons laidIn deepest arches of the mind. 100
Come back! Not ours the Old World's good,The Old World's ill, thank God, not ours;But here, far better understood,The days enforce our native mood,And challenge all our manlier powers.
Kindlier to me the place of birthThat first my tottering footsteps trod;There may be fairer spots of earth,But all their glories are not worthThe virtue in the native sod. 110
Thence climbs an influence more benignThrough pulse and nerve, through heart and brain;Sacred to me those fibres fineThat first clasped earth. Oh, ne'er be mineThe alien sun and alien rain!
These nourish not like homelier glowsOr waterings of familiar skies,And nature fairer blooms bestowsOn the heaped hush of wintry snows,In pastures dear to childhood's eyes, 120
Than where Italian earth receivesThe partial sunshine's ampler boons,Where vines carve friezes 'neath the eaves,And, in dark firmaments of leaves,The orange lifts its golden moons.
What Nature makes in any moodTo me is warranted for good,Though long before I learned to seeShe did not set us moral theses,And scorned to have her sweet capricesStrait-waistcoated in you or me.
I, who take root and firmly cling,Thought fixedness the only thing;Why Nature made the butterflies,(Those dreams of wings that float and hover 10At noon the slumberous poppies over,)Was something hidden from mine eyes,
Till once, upon a rock's brown bosom,Bright as a thorny cactus-blossom,I saw a butterfly at rest;Then first of both I felt the beauty;The airy whim, the grim-set duty,Each from the other took its best.
Clearer it grew than winter skyThat Nature still had reasons why; 20And, shifting sudden as a breeze,My fancy found no satisfaction,No antithetic sweet attraction,So great as in the Nomades.
Scythians, with Nature not at strife,Light Arabs of our complex life,They build no houses, plant no millsTo utilize Time's sliding river,Content that it flow waste forever,If they, like it, may have their wills. 30
An hour they pitch their shifting tentsIn thoughts, in feelings, and events;Beneath the palm-trees, on the grass,They sing, they dance, make love, and chatter,Vex the grim temples with their clatter,And make Truth's fount their looking-glass.
A picnic life; from love to love,From faith to faith they lightly move,And yet, hard-eyed philosopher,The flightiest maid that ever hovered 40To me your thought-webs fine discovered,No lens to see them through like her.
So witchingly her finger-tipsTo Wisdom, as away she trips,She kisses, waves such sweet farewellsTo Duty, as she laughs 'To-morrow!'That both from that mad contrast borrowA perfectness found nowhere else.
The beach-bird on its pearly vergeFollows and flies the whispering surge, 50While, in his tent, the rock-stayed shellAwaits the flood's star-timed vibrations,And both, the flutter and the patience,The sauntering poet loves them well.
Fulfil so much of God's decreeAs works its problem out in thee,Nor dream that in thy breast aloneThe conscience of the changeful seasons,The Will that in the planets reasonsWith space-wide logic, has its throne. 60
Thy virtue makes not vice of mine,Unlike, but none the less divine;Thy toil adorns, not chides, my play;Nature of sameness is so chary,With such wild whim the freakish fairyPicks presents for the christening-day.
A presence both by night and day,That made my life seem just begun,Yet scarce a presence, rather sayThe warning aureole of one.
And yet I felt it everywhere;Walked I the woodland's aisles along,It seemed to brush me with its hair;Bathed I, I heard a mermaid's song.
How sweet it was! A buttercupCould hold for me a day's delight,A bird could lift my fancy upTo ether free from cloud or blight.
Who was the nymph? Nay, I will see,Methought, and I will know her near;If such, divined, her charm can be,Seen and possessed, how triply dear!
So every magic art I tried,And spells as numberless as sand,Until, one evening, by my sideI saw her glowing fulness stand.
I turned to clasp her, but 'Farewell,'Parting she sighed, 'we meet no more;Not by my hand the curtain fellThat leaves you conscious, wise, and poor.
'Since you nave found me out, I go;Another lover I must find,Content his happiness to know,Nor strive its secret to unwind.'
A heap of bare and splintery cragsTumbled about by lightning and frost,With rifts and chasms and storm-bleached jags,That wait and growl for a ship to be lost;No island, but rather the skeletonOf a wrecked and vengeance-smitten one,Where, æons ago, with half-shut eye,The sluggish saurian crawled to die,Gasping under titanic ferns;Ribs of rock that seaward jut, 10Granite shoulders and boulders and snags,Round which, though the winds in heaven be shut,The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns,Welters, and swashes, and tosses, and turns,And the dreary black seaweed lolls and wags;Only rock from shore to shore,Only a moan through the bleak clefts blown,With sobs in the rifts where the coarse kelp shifts,Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting,And under all a deep, dull roar, 20Dying and swelling, forevermore,—Rock and moan and roar alone,And the dread of some nameless thing unknown,These make Appledore.
These make Appledore by night:Then there are monsters left and right;Every rock is a different monster;All you have read of, fancied, dreamed,When you waked at night because you screamed,There they lie for half a mile, 30Jumbled together in a pile,And (though you know they never once stir)If you look long, they seem to be movingJust as plainly as plain can be,Crushing and crowding, wading and shovingOut into the awful sea,Where you can hear them snort and spoutWith pauses between, as if they were listening,Then tumult anon when the surf breaks glisteningIn the blackness where they wallow about. 40
All this you would scarcely comprehend,Should you see the isle on a sunny day;Then it is simple enough in its way,—Two rocky bulges, one at each end,With a smaller bulge and a hollow between;Patches of whortleberry and bay;Accidents of open green,Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray,Like graveyards for ages deserted; a fewUnsocial thistles; an elder or two, 50Foamed over with blossoms white as spray;And on the whole island never a treeSave a score of sumachs, high as your knee.That crouch in hollows where they may,(The cellars where once stood a village, men say,)Huddling for warmth, and never grewTall enough for a peep at the sea;A general dazzle of open blue;A breeze always blowing and playing rat-tatWith the bow of the ribbon round your hat; 60A score of sheep that do nothing but stareUp or down at you everywhere;Three or four cattle that chew the cudLying about in a listless despair;A medrick that makes you look overheadWith short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey,And, dropping straight and swift as lead,Splits the water with sudden thud;—This is Appledore by day.
A common island, you will say; 70But stay a moment: only climbUp to the highest rock of the isle,Stand there alone for a little while,And with gentle approaches it grows sublime,Dilating slowly as you winA sense from the silence to take it in.So wide the loneness, so lucid the air,The granite beneath you so savagely bare,You well might think you were looking downFrom some sky-silenced mountain's crown, 80Whose waist-belt of pines is wont to tearLocks of wool from the topmost cloud.Only be sure you go alone,For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud,And never yet has backward thrownHer veil to feed the stare of a crowd;To more than one was never shownThat awful front, nor is it fitThat she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowedUntil the self-approving pit 90Enjoy the gust of its own witIn babbling plaudits cheaply loud;She hides her mountains and her seaFrom the harriers of scenery,Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay,Mouthing and mumbling the dying day.
Trust me, 'tis something to be castFace to face with one's Self at last,To be taken out of the fuss and strife,The endless clatter of plate and knife, 100The bore of books and the bores of the street,From the singular mess we agree to call Life,Where that is best which the most fools vote is,And planted firm on one's own two feetSo nigh to the great warm heart of God,You almost seem to feel it beatDown from the sunshine and up from the sod;To be compelled, as it were, to noticeAll the beautiful changes and chancesThrough which the landscape flits and glances, 110And to see how the face of common dayIs written all over with tender histories,When you study it that intenser wayIn which a lover looks at his mistress.
Till now you dreamed not what could be doneWith a bit of rock and a ray of sun:But look, how fade the lights and shadesOf keen bare edge and crevice deep!How doubtfully it fades and fades,And glows again, yon craggy steep, 120O'er which, through color's dreamiest grades,The musing sunbeams pause and creep!Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray,Now shadows to a filmy blue,Tries one, tries all, and will not stay,But flits from opal hue to hue,And runs through every tenderest rangeOf change that seems not to be change,So rare the sweep, so nice the art,That lays no stress on any part, 130But shifts and lingers and persuades;So soft that sun-brush in the west,That asks no costlier pigments' aids,But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints,Indifferent of worst or best,Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hintsAnd gracious preludings of tints,Where all seems fixed, yet all evades,And indefinably pervadesPerpetual movement with perpetual rest! 140
Away northeast is Boone Island light;You might mistake it for a ship,Only it stands too plumb upright,And like the others does not slipBehind the sea's unsteady brink;Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dipUpon it a moment, 'twill suddenly sink,Levelled and lost in the darkened main,Till the sun builds it suddenly up again,As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp. 150On the mainland you see a misty campOf mountains pitched tumultuously:That one looming so long and largeIs Saddleback, and that point you seeOver yon low and rounded marge,Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targeLaid over his breast, is Ossipee;That shadow there may be Kearsarge;That must be Great Haystack; I love these names,Wherewith the lonely farmer tames 160Nature to mute companionshipWith his own mind's domestic mood,And strives the surly world to clipIn the arms of familiar habitude.'Tis well he could not contrive to makeA Saxon of Agamenticus:He glowers there to the north of us,Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze,Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to takeThe white man's baptism or his ways. 170Him first on shore the coaster divinesThrough the early gray, and sees him shakeThe morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines;Him first the skipper makes out in the west,Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous,Plashing with orange the palpitant linesOf mutable billow, crest after crest,And murmursAgamenticus!As if it were the name of a saint.But is that a mountain playing cloud, 180Or a cloud playing mountain, just there, so faint?Look along over the low right shoulderOf Agamenticus into that crowdOf brassy thunderheads behind it;Now you have caught it, but, ere you are olderBy half an hour, you will lose it and find itA score of times; while you look 'tis gone,And, just as you've given it up, anonIt is there again, till your weary eyesFancy they see it waver and rise, 190With its brother clouds; it is Agiochook,There if you seek not, and gone if you look,Ninety miles off as the eagle flies.
But mountains make not all the shoreThe mainland shows to Appledore:Eight miles the heaving water spreadsTo a long, low coast with beaches and headsThat run through unimagined mazes,As the lights and shades and magical hazesPut them away or bring them near, 200Shimmering, sketched out for thirty milesBetween two capes that waver like threads,And sink in the ocean, and reappear,Crumbled and melted to little islesWith filmy trees, that seem the mereHalf-fancies of drowsy atmosphere;And see the beach there, where it isFlat as a threshing-floor, beaten and packedWith the flashing flails of weariless seas,How it lifts and looms to a precipice, 210O'er whose square front, a dream, no more,The steepened sand-stripes seem to pour,A murmurless vision of cataract;You almost fancy you hear a roar,Fitful and faint from the distance wandering;But 'tis only the blind old ocean maundering,Raking the shingle to and fro,Aimlessly clutching and letting goThe kelp-haired sedges of Appledore,Slipping down with a sleepy forgetting, 220And anon his ponderous shoulder setting,With a deep, hoarse pant against Appledore.
Eastward as far as the eye can see,Still eastward, eastward, endlessly,The sparkle and tremor of purple seaThat rises before you, a flickering hill,On and on to the shut of the sky,And beyond, you fancy it sloping untilThe same multitudinous throb and thrillThat vibrate under your dizzy eye 230In ripples of orange and pink are sentWhere the poppied sails doze on the yard,And the clumsy junk and proa lieSunk deep with precious woods and nard,'Mid the palmy isles of the Orient.Those leaning towers of clouded whiteOn the farthest brink of doubtful ocean,That shorten and shorten out of sight,Yet seem on the selfsame spot to stay,Receding with a motionless motion, 240Fading to dubious films of gray,Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly,Will rise again, the great world under,First films, then towers, then high-heaped clouds,Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowlyInto tall ships with cobweb shrouds,That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder,Crushing the violet wave to sprayPast some low headland of Cathay;—What was that sigh which seemed so near, 250Chilling your fancy to the core?'Tis only the sad old sea you hear,That seems to seek forevermoreSomething it cannot find, and so,Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woeTo the pitiless breakers of Appledore.
How looks Appledore in a storm?I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic,Butting against the mad Atlantic,When surge on surge would heap enorme, 260Cliffs of emerald topped with snow,That lifted and lifted, and then let goA great white avalanche of thunder,A grinding, blinding, deafening ireMonadnock might have trembled under;And the island, whose rock-roots pierce belowTo where they are warmed with the central fire,You could feel its granite fibres racked,As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrillRight at the breast of the swooping hill, 270And to rise again snorting a cataractOf rage-froth from every cranny and ledge,While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep,And the next vast breaker curled its edge,Gathering itself for a mightier leap.
North, east, and south there are reefs and breakersYou would never dream of in smooth weather,That toss and gore the sea for acres,Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together;Look northward, where Duck Island lies, 280And over its crown you will see arise,Against a background of slaty skies,A row of pillars still and white,That glimmer, and then are gone from sight,As if the moon should suddenly kiss,While you crossed the gusty desert by night,The long colonnades of Persepolis;Look southward for White Island light,The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide;There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight, 290Of dash and roar and tumble and fright,And surging bewilderment wild and wide,Where the breakers struggle left and right,Then a mile or more of rushing sea,And then the lighthouse slim and lone;And whenever the weight of ocean is thrownFull and fair on White Island head,A great mist-jotun you will seeLifting himself up silentlyHigh and huge o'er the lighthouse top, 300With hands of wavering spray outspread,Groping after the little tower,That seems to shrink and shorten and cower,Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop,And silently and fruitlesslyHe sinks back into the sea.
You, meanwhile, where drenched you stand,Awaken once more to the rush and roar,And on the rock-point tighten your hand,As you turn and see a valley deep, 310That was not there a moment before,Suck rattling down between you and a heapOf toppling billow, whose instant fallMust sink the whole island once for all,Or watch the silenter, stealthier seasFeeling their way to you more and more;If they once should clutch you high as the knees,They would whirl you down like a sprig of kelp,Beyond all reach of hope or help;—And such in a storm is Appledore. 320
'Tis the sight of a lifetime to beholdThe great shorn sun as you see it now,Across eight miles of undulant goldThat widens landward, weltered and rolled,With freaks of shadow and crimson stains;To see the solid mountain browAs it notches the disk, and gains and gains,Until there comes, you scarce know when,A tremble of fire o'er the parted lipsOf cloud and mountain, which vanishes; then 330From the body of day the sun-soul slipsAnd the face of earth darkens; but now the stripsOf western vapor, straight and thin,From which the horizon's swervings winA grace of contrast, take fire and burnLike splinters of touchwood, whose edges a mouldOf ashes o'er feathers; northward turnFor an instant, and let your eye grow coldOn Agamenticus, and when once moreYou look, 'tis as if the land-breeze, growing, 340From the smouldering brands the film were blowing,And brightening them down to the very core;Yet, they momently cool and dampen and deaden,The crimson turns golden, the gold turns leaden,Hardening into one black barO'er which, from the hollow heaven afar,Shoots a splinter of light like diamond,Half seen, half fancied; by and byBeyond whatever is most beyondIn the uttermost waste of desert sky, 350Grows a star;And over it, visible spirit of dew,—Ah, stir not, speak not, hold your breath,Or surely the miracle vanisheth,—The new moon, tranced in unspeakable blue!No frail illusion; this were true,Rather, to call it the canoeHollowed out of a single pearl,That floats us from the Present's whirlBack to those beings which were ours, 360When wishes were wingèd things like powers!Call it not light, that mystery tender,Which broods upon the brooding ocean,That flush of ecstasied surrenderTo indefinable emotion,That glory, mellower than a mistOf pearl dissolved with amethyst,Which rims Square Rock, like what they paintOf mitigated heavenly splendorRound the stern forehead of a Saint! 370
No more a vision, reddened, largened,The moon dips toward her mountain nest,And, fringing it with palest argent,Slow sheathes herself behind the margentOf that long cloud-bar in the West,Whose nether edge, erelong, you seeThe silvery chrism in turn anoint,And then the tiniest rosy pointTouched doubtfully and timidlyInto the dark blue's chilly strip,As some mute, wondering thing below, 381Awakened by the thrilling glow,Might, looking up, see Dian dipOne lucent foot's delaying tipIn Latmian fountains long ago.
Knew you what silence was before?Here is no startle of dreaming birdThat sings in his sleep, or strives to sing;Here is no sough of branches stirred,Nor noise of any living thing, 390Such as one hears by night on shore;Only, now and then, a sigh,With fickle intervals between,Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh,Such as Andromeda might have heard,And fancied the huge sea-beast unseenTurning in sleep; it is the seaThat welters and wavers uneasily.Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.