Classic Poem

(F OR THE Old H OME F ESTIVAL AT F ALMOUTH )

There is many a whither away and many a clarion call,
Many a deed for the doing and many a land to roam;
There are wonder-ways that wander where ancient shadows fall;
There is only one path home.

And green is the path that leadeth to where in life's first days
Our hearts like the buds of April to sun and to wind uncurled,
Taught by this fair sea-village, wrapt in its pearly haze,
The beauty of the world.

It is here that our pulses caught the beat of the dancing earth,
The multitudinous laughter of the violet waves at play,
That our childhood took from the heart of God the gift of mirth
Simply as thrushes may.

It is here that we first saw sorrow, here on these rose-clad sands;
When for her homing sailors the town made jubilee,
Oh, the widow, the storm-robbed mother, that stretched imploring hands
To the unappealable sea!

With the breath of the pine and the cedar there came to our spirits here
The breath of heroic life from the captains whose voyages were done,
Like the bronzed sweetfern of October proud in their fading year,
Honors of manhood won.

Here, too, where all were neighbors and hand lay warm in hand,
Where, like our pink Mayflower with brown leaves heaped above,
Plain ways hid finest feeling, a child might understand
The loveliness of love.

And like to the salty flaw that would pierce the forest scent,
Beyond the sweet of the woods the illimitable brine,
Ever there thrilled to us through all human cherishment
Hints of the far divine.

Thence it came that, as down the curve of our wind-obeying cape,
The low, white, drifted dunes are wavy like the sea,
Early our thoughts were molded to the unconscious shape
Of immortality.

There is many a shrine for pilgrims — the fountain that quenched our thirst,
The hard-scaled summit of vision, the field of our perilous strife,
But holy the awe that broodeth o'er the spot where we tasted first
The sacrament of life.