Classic Poem

Farewell awhile, ye fields and woods,
Garden and copse and mount and dell,
Ye lapsing streams and dashing floods,
My cherished home and haunts, farewell!

No longer 'mid your dim retreats
Must I, oblivious, muse and dream,
Deep shadowed from the noontide heats,
Or Summer evening's crimson beam.

Once more upon the waves of life,
My bark, unmoored, must spread her sail;
Surrounded by the din, the strife,
To woo the breeze or breast the gale.

Oh, many a nobler hulk than mine
Drifts wrecked upon a rocky strand,
And many a frailer, o'er the brine
Speeds safely to the looked-for land!

Once more, commingled with the throng,
Must I the noise and tumult hear;
Even while the wild bird's matin song
Still rings on my delighted ear.

Less sweet the measured sounds of Art
From lips of human warblers fall;
A dearer language to the heart
Speaks Nature's minstrels than them all.

How beautiful the pictures drawn
By sunrise on the tinted sky —
What shadows on the lake and lawn,
In mass and outline softly lie!

Could Claude's or Rembrandt's pencil trace
Distineter lines or deeper hues?
Can Painting yield so true a grace,
Or such transparent light infuse?

No! in your halls and galleries gay,
With artificial sounds and sights,
Ye cities, there's no voice or ray
Like Nature's, for your days or nights.

Therefore, with unavailing tears
I contemplate my happy home;
Therefore, with many doubts and fears,
I leave my Sabine farm for Rome.

It must be so; though Love and Peace
Are one beneath these vines and trees;
My very powers of thought would cease,
If wasted in luxurious ease.

Then welcome, busy life, again —
Welcome, familiar thought and toil —
The daily intercourse with men,
The wasting of the midnight oil!

But less than poet I should be,
Garden and copse and mount and dell,
Fields, woods, streams, floods, home, haunts, if ye
Were left without one sad farewell!