Classic Poem

Or mark in August as the twilight falls,
Like wreaths of timid smoke, the curling mists
Poured from some smouldering fire across
The meadows cool, whose shadows thrown
So faintly, seem to fall asleep with day!
How softly pours the thin and curling mist!
Now shall the eye half lose in it all faith,
As it were but the mockery of the brain,
Then if it gather denser own its truth.
O twilight world! abode of Peace, how deep
Might we not envy him who in thee lives,
With that same quietness that lives in thee;
And like thy soft and gently-falling beauty
His repose,—dreams in the flood-tide of the world.
Alas! I fear but few who walk these streets,
That wear as deep tranquillity,
Poor slaves of fashion and the prints of form,
Or simply frivolous if first youth gild
An aimless brow with pleasure, or the dupe
Of little weak successes, that deceive
Their shallow owners, martyrs to mere cant,
If cant it be, to not perceive their vice.
And yet those nobler souls, whose hopes were wrecked
On some remote mischance, remote in time,
But nearest to their hearts.
Forbear such themes;
For now the upland Pastures draped with green,
Invite us to that pleasing task unsung,
The Berry-field, where in a frolic chain
Knit by gay industry, the healthy band
Of bounding children go, and glean the grain
That ripens without cost, to laboring steer,
Or dim domestic horse, the farmer's butt.
Not olden Crœsus in imperial wealth,
Nor the bright jewel-chambers of a crown
Famed for barbaric conquest, pulled from Ind
Wreaths for its queen, like these unnoticed moors,
Pregnant with Blueberries whose colors mock
The overhanging sky, all turquoise gems!
Not that Vitellius wooed or Horace sung
Praise of Falernian, or delightful mead
In Chaucer's time no mythus, could now win
From us a single sentence, while we pluck
The abundant fruit adapted to the hand,
And place and hour, while slowly o'er the hills
The unnerved day piles her prodigious sunshine.
Here, be gardens of Hesperian mould,
Recesses rare, temples of birch and fern,
Preserves of light-green Sumac, Ivy thick,
And old stone-fences tottering to their fall,
And gleaming lakes that cool invite the bath,
And most aerial mountains for the West!
Italy and Greece? and would ye fly to them,
Poor, rash, deluded travellers, art and fame
That they have built afar their gilded seats,—
Capricious children, in our berry-fields,
That bound the horizon's verge from where
Ye sit, near by at ease, here be your shrines!
With but a glistening pail, an honest hand,
And thought that loves the air and heart at home,
Ye safe may laugh at those poor foreign lands,
Where dilettanti apes go clad in weeds,
And ruined temples rear their weary moss.