Classic Poem

O, what a life is mine!
A life of light and mirth,
The sensuous life of Earth,
For ever fresh and fine,
A heavenly worldliness, mortality divine!
When eastern skies, the sea, and misty plain
Illumined slowly, doff their nightly shrouds,
And Heaven's bright archer Morn begins to rain
His golden arrows through the banded clouds,
I rise and tramp away the jocund hours,
Knee-deep in dewy grass, and beds of flowers;
Trace my eager greyhound on the hills,
And climb with bounding feet the craggy steeps,
Peak-lifted, gazing down the cloven deeps,
Where mighty rivers shrink to threaded rills;
The ramparts of the mountains loom around,
Like splintered fragments of a ruined world;
The cliff-bound dashing cataracts, downward hurled
In thunderous volumes, shake the chasms profound;
The imperial eagle with a dauntless eye
Wheels round the sun, the monarch of the sky;
I pluck his eyrie in the blasted wood
Of ragged pines, and when the vulture screams,
I track its flight along the solitude,
Like some dark spirit in the world of dreams!
When Noon in golden armor, travel-spent,
Climbing the azure plains of Heaven, alone,
Draws back the curtains of his cloudy tent,
And looks o'er Nature from his burning throne,
I loose my little shallop from its quay,
And down the winding stream it slowly floats,
The while I steer in many a cove and bay,
Where birds are warbling with melodious throats;
I listen to the humming of the bees,
The water's flow, the winds, the wavy trees,
Then take my lute, and touch its silver chords,
And set the Summer's melody to words;
Sometimes I rove beside the lonely shore,
Margined and flanked by slanting shelvy ledges,
Bastioned by old gray rocks with dripping edges,
And caverns echoing Ocean's sullen roar;
Threading the bladdery weeds and paven shells,
Beyond the line of foam, the jewelled chain,
The largesse of the ever-giving main,
Tossed at the feet of Earth with surgy swells,
I plunge into the waves, and strike away,
Breasting with vigorous strokes the snowy spray;
Sometimes I lounge in arbors hung with vines,
And press the bunchy grapes in various wines,
The which I sip, and sip, with pleasure mute,
O'er mouthful bites of golden-rinded fruit,
Parting their separate flavors, bliss by bliss,
Like one who swoons in some immortal kiss!
When Evening comes, I lie in dreamy rest,
Where lifted casements front the glowing west,
And watch the clouds, like banners wide unfurled,
Hung o'er the flaming threshold of the world:
Its mission done, the holy Day recedes,
Borne Heavenward in its car, with fiery steeds,
Leaving behind a lingering flush of light,
Its mantle fallen at the feet of Night;
The flocks are penned, the earth is growing dim,
The moon comes rounding up the welkin's rim,
Glowing through thinnest mist, an argent shell,
Washed from the caves of darkness on a swell;
One after one the stars begin to shine
In drifted beds, like pearls through shallow brine;
And lo! through clouds that part before the chase
Of silent winds — a belt of milky white,
The Galaxy, a crested surge of light,
A reef of worlds along the sea of Space:
I hear my sweet musicians far withdrawn,
Below my wreathed lattice, on the lawn,
With harp, and lute, and lyre,
And passionate voices full of tears and fire,
And envious nightingales with rich disdain
Filling the pauses of the languid strain;
My soul is tranced and bound,
Drifting along the magic sea of sound,
Driven in a bark of bliss from deep to deep,
And piloted at last into the ports of Sleep!