Classic Poem

Last summer, in the Catskill range,
I took a sketch, and thought it good,
Of yonder dale,—and now 't is strange,
The picture chimes not with my mood.

And yet the brush's motley trace
Repeats the landscape to my eye;
The hills, with grave or smiling grace
Of chiselled profile, fret the sky.

The knoll still shrinks beyond the lawn
To nothingness 'twixt loftier steeps,
Gay creepers on the cottage fawn,
And o'er the brook the willow weeps.

The unchained skiff upon the bank
Its shoulder rests, as in a doze;
The oars press down the rushes dank,
The lake with yellow sunset glows.

Yon urchin toward the water sways
His oxen, lightened of their yoke;
The air they breathe is autumn's haze,
Or Indian summer's chilly smoke.

Yet,—like some tune that wakes no more,
Though sweetly sung in after years,
Emotions which it roused of yore,
The dance's throb, the burial's tears,—

My canvas mirror, tame and cold,
Lacks sleeping Nature's living glow;
Like shrouds its shadows wrap the wold,
Nor with the sunset seem to grow.

Ah! now I see its chief defect;
My hand refused, beneath the porch,
To seat the lass with garlands decked
Whose eyes took up day's fading torch