Classic Poem

ON RECEIVING FROM HIM A BEAUTIFUL SILVER FRUIT-DISH,
CHRISTMAS, 1864 .

Out of what charmed artist's brain
Came the beautiful form I here behold?
The soul of a glorious Greek, it is plain,
Must have dreamed this dream of silver and gold.
Perchance he lived in an attic cold,
His guest the sun, and the rain, and the wind;
His only riches the wealth untold,
Which glows and gleams in the artist mind;
Doomed never to taste the far-off fruit,
That shall crown this carved and delicate brim.
Does he walk the world? or is he mute
In the dust of buried ages dim?
Though he lives or sleeps in his funeral suit,
The heart of the bard goes out to him.
With this wonderful work before me placed,
So pure in its beauty, embossed, and chased,
The fancy suddenly plumes her wing
And flies to regions where never yet
Her noiseless and venturous feet were set,
And as she flies, she needs must sing;
She hovers o'er Indian mines afar,
And seeks the fabulous ophir field;
And Palestine under its Christmas star;
Or, in Hellas, finds some Homerian shield,
Into ingots made by the greed of a Turk;
Or beautiful censer, a rare antique,
Swung in the hands of a Roman or Greek;
Or delicate image, Athenian work,
Melted and sold by some infidel thief,
Whom the gods have long since brought to grief;
Or wonderful vase, by Cellini made,
To grace the cloth of some princely board;
Or traces within the Cathedral shade,
Those sainted and silver statues fine,
Which Cromwell, going from shrine to shrine,
Cast angrily down in the name of the Lord,
Then rolled them in coin through the world of trade,
Till they slept, perchance, in a miser's hoard.
She sweeps where Brazilian summer shines
Into the shades of the Andean mines;
By turbulent rivers, broad, deep, and bold,
'Mid California's hills of gold;
Under giant cedars, antique as man,
Planted ere History's life began;
And there beholds, in its glittering birth,
The new-found ore as old as the earth.

A thousand mystical guesses arise
And swim in the dream-light of her eyes —
But all in vain; she only knows
That this beautiful form before her glows,
Silver without and golden within;
It gleams like a rising harvest moon,
When labor ceases and pleasures begin
In a land of fruit at the close of June.
Alive with its light is the twilight room,
And already I breathe the sweet perfume,
The delicious odors that seem to swim
Around its future laden brim;
The grape and the plum, the pear and the peach;
All these seem glowing within my reach,
And mingling its delicate odor and smile
Is the fruit of many a far-off isle;
But sweeter still the thought ascends,
Around it I see kind groups of friends.
The metal is solid, and massive, and pure,
And wrought with all skill that an artist can lend;
But there's something exists that I value still more —
It is this: and the Master Designer, I'm sure,
Took out from Humanity's mine the best ore
To make it — the generous heart of my friend.