Classic Poem

On the rough Bracco's top, at break of day,
High o'er that gulf which bounds the Genoese,
Since thou and I pursued our mountain way,
Twenty Decembers have disrobed the trees.

Charmed by the glowing earth and golden sky,
In Arno's vale you made yourself a nest;
There perched in peace and bookish case, while I,
In love with Freedom, sought her in the West.

And here, amid remembrances that throng
Thicker than blossoms in the new-born June,
Thine chiefly claims the token of a song
That still, at least, my heart remains in tune.

But who can sing amid this roar of streets,
This crash of engines and discordant mills,
Where even in Solitude's most lone retreats
Some factory drowns the music of the rills?

True, Nature here hath donned her gala robe,
Rich in all charms, — bland, savage, and sublime, —
Within one realm enfolding half the globe,
Flowers of all soils, and fruits of every clime.

But yet no bard, with consecrating touch,
Hath made the scene a nobler mood inspire;
The sullen Puritan, the sensual Dutch,
Proved but a barren fosterage for the lyre.

Here by the ploughman, as with daily tread
He tracks the furrows of his virgin ground,
Dark locks of hair, and thigh-bones of the dead,
Spear-heads, and skulls, and arrow-heads are found.

On such memorials unconcerned we gaze;
No trace returning of the glow divine
Wherewith, dear Walter! in our Eton days
We eyed a fragment from the Palatine.

Cellini's workmanship could nothing add,
Nor the Pope's blessing, nor a case of gold,
To the strange value every pebble had
O'er which perhaps the Tiber's wave had rolled.

A like enchantment all thy land pervades,
Mellows the sunshine, softens autumn's breeze,
O'erhangs the mouldering town, and chestnut shades,
And glows and sparkles in her storied seas.

No such a spell the charmed adventurer guides
Who seeks those ruins hid in Yucatan,
Where through the tropic forest, silent glides,
By crumbled fane and idol, slow Copan.

There, as the weedy pyramid he climbs,
Or views, mid groves that rankly wave above,
The work of nameless hands in unknown times,
Much wakes his wonder — nothing stirs his love.

Art's rude beginnings, wheresoever found,
The same dull chord of feeling faintly strike;
The Druid's pillar, and the Indian mound,
And Uxmal's monuments, are mute alike.

And here, although the gorgeous year hath brought
Crimson October's beautiful decay,
Seldom this loveliness inspires a thought
Beyond the marvels of the fleeting day.

For here the Present overpowers the Past;
No recollections to these woods belong,
O'er which no minstrelsy its veil hath east,
To rouse our worship, or supply my song.

But these will come; the neeromaneer Age
Shall round the wilderness his glory throw;
Hudson shall murmur through the poet's page,
And in his numbers more superbly flow.

Enough! — 't is more than midnight by the clock;
Manhattan dreams of dollars, all abed:
With you, dear Walter, 't is the crow of cock,
And o'er Fiesole the skies are red.

Good-night! yet stay — both longitudes to suit,
Your own returning, and my absent light,
Thus let me bid our mutual salute;
To you buon-giorno — for myself good-night!