Classic Poem

The dews are dry upon my sandal-shoon
Which bathed them on the foreign hills of song,
And now beneath the white and sultry noon
They print the dust which they may wear too long.

The flowers by delicate fingers wove at morn
Around my pilgrim staff have paled and died,
Or dropped into the sand, and lie forlorn,
Mute orphans of the airy mountain side.

The mingled music in the early gale,
Of bees and birds, and maidens among flowers,
The brooks, like shepherds, piping down the vale,
For these my heart remounts the morning hours.

Oh, that I might reclimb the dewy dawn,
And with the stars sit down by Castalie,
And be once more within the shade withdrawn,
Mantled with music and with Poesy.

Thou blessed bird between me and the heaven,
Thou winged censer, swinging through the air
With incense of pure song, — how hast thou driven
One to the past, that may not linger there!

Oh, for one wild annihilating hour,
Spent with the minstrels of a loftier time;
Those giants among bards, whose high songs tower
Full many a rood o'er all our new sublime.

Oh, for an hour with Chaucer, the divine,
The morning star of English song confessed;
Ushering a day whose slow but sure decline
Fades with a fitful glimmering in the west.

Oh, for that rare auroral time, which brought
The light of Shakespeare, and the glorious few,
Who, in their glowing robes of deathless thought,
Strode knee-deep through Parnassian flowers and dew.

The hot sands gleam around me, and I thirst, —
The wayside springs have sunk into themselves;
And even the little blossoms which they nursed,
Have vanished from their side, like faithless elves.

Whence lead the sandy courses of these rills?
Do they foretell a mightier stream at hand,
With voice triumphant, worthy of these hills?
Where are thy rivers, oh, my native land?

A few brave souls have sparkled into sight,
With living flashes of celestial art;
Souls who might flood the world with new delight,
Keep sealed the deepest fountains of the heart.

Oh, for a cloud to oversweep the west,
And with a deluge burst these deeper springs, —
A voiceful cloud, with grandeur in its breast,
And lightning on its far impending wings.

Oh, for one mighty heart and fearless hand!
For such, methinks, my country, is thy due, —
The embodied spirit of his forest land,
Who, scorning not the old, shall sing the new.

Here will I rest until the day declines,
A voiceless pilgrim toward the land of song;
And, like a sentinel, catch the herald signs
Of him whose coming hath been stayed too long.