Classic Poem

This then is America!
This the new, the virgin world!
Not the one to-day already
Europeanized and withering, —

'Tis the new, the virgin world,
As when Christopher Columbus
Drew it from the waste of ocean,
Fresh and shining from the billows.

Dripping with the watery pearls
That in dazzling colours vanish
'Neath the sun's impassioned kisses.
Oh, how healthy is this world!

'Tis no silly heap of rubbish,
Fossilized perukes and symbols
Dull and mouldy; 'tis no graveyard
Of romantic, foolish poems.

Healthy from the healthy ground
Spring the trees — not one among them
Blase , or with spinal marrow
Rotting, dwindling in consumption.

Giant birds are swinging gaily
On the boughs, their rainbow plumage
Shimmering brightly, with enormous
Solemn bills, and eyes encircled,

Spectacled, with rims of black.
And they gaze on me in silence,
Then begin to chatter loudly
Like so many coffee-swillers.

What they say I cannot tell you,
Though acquainted with their language,
Versed therein like Solomon,
He who had a thousand wives,

And was learned in the tongues
Of the feathered folk, not only
In the living tongues, but also
In the dialects dead and stuffed.

New the land, and new the flowers!
New the flowers, new the fragrance!
Scents of flowers wild, unheard-of,
To my nostrils rise, and tease me,

Prickling, yearning, tantalizing;
And, my sense of smell tormented,
I keep sniffing to discover
Where, before, I met these odours.

Was't in Regent Street, in London,
In the sunny arms and golden
Of the slender Javanese
Who was always chewing flowers?

Or in Rotterdam, I wonder,
By the column of Erasmus,
In the wafer-shop, the white one,
With the close, mysterious curtains?

But while thus I stared dumfounded
At the new, the virgin world,
It, on its side, seemed to view me
Even with more of shy amazement.

From the grove a startled monkey,
Peeping, crossed himself affrighted,
Cried in horror, " 'Tis a spectre
From the ancient world arisen. "

Fear me not, O gentle monkey
I am neither ghost nor vision;
In my veins the blood is leaping,
Life avows me as her son.

But so long now I have trafficked
With the dead, I may have mimicked
Quite unconsciously their manners
And their oddities mysterious.

Many years, and those my best ones,
I have lived in old Kyffhäuser,
In the Venusberg, and other
Catacombs of the Romantic.

Prithee, fear me not. I like thee,
Gentle monkey, for thy hairless,
Tanned and shaven hinder quarters
Bear my favourite old colours.

Precious colours! Black-red-golden!
On this monkey's hinder quarters,
They recall to me with sorrow
Those of Barbarossa's banner.