Classic Poem

I.

Dreams come true, and everything
Is fresh and lusty in the spring.

In groves that smell like ambergris,
Wind-songs, bird-songs, never cease.

Go with me down by the stream,
Haunt of bass and purple bream;

Feel the pleasure, keen and sweet,
When the cool waves lap your feet;

Catch the breath of moss and mould,
Hear the grosbeak's whistle bold;

See the heron all alone
Midstream on a slippery stone,

Or, on some decaying log,
Spearing snail or water-frog.

See the shoals of sun-perch shine
Among the pebbles smooth and fine,

Whilst the sprawling turtles swim
In the eddies cool and dim!

II.

The busy nuthatch climbs his tree,
Around the great bole spirally,

Peeping into wrinkles gray,
Under ruffled lichens gay,

Lazily piping one sharp note
From his silver mailid throat;

And down the wind the catbird's song
A slender medley trails along.

Here a grackle chirping low,
There a crested vireo;

Deep in tangled underbrush
Flits the shadowy hermit-thrush;

Coos the dove, the robin trills,
The crows caw from the airy hills;

Purple finch and pewee gray,
Bluebird, swallow, oriole gay, —

Every tongue of Nature sings;
The air is palpitant with wings.

Halcyon prophecies come to pass
In the haunts of bream and bass.

III.

Bubble, bubble, flows the stream,
Like an old tune through a dream.

Now I cast my silken line;
See the gay lure spin and shine,

While with delicate touch I feel
The gentle pulses of the reel.

Halcyon laughs and cuckoo cries;
Through as leaves the plane-tree sighs.

Bubble, bubble, flows the stream,
Here a glow and there a gleam;

Coolness all about me creeping,
Fragrance all my senses steeping, —

Spicewood, sweet-gum, sassafras,
Calamus and water-grass,

Giving up their pungent smells,
Drawn from Nature's secret wells;

On the cool breath of the morn,
Perfume of the cock-spur thorn,

Green spathes of the dragon-root,
Indian turnip's tender shoot,

Dogwood, red-bud, elder, ash,
Snowy gleam and purple flash,

Hillside hickets, densely green,
That the partridge revels in!

IV.

I see the morning-glory's curl,
The curious star-flower's pointed whorl;

Hear the woodpecker, rap-a-tap!
See him with his cardinal's cap!

And the querulous, leering jay,
How he clamors for a fray!

Patiently I draw and cast,
Keenly expectant till, at last,

Comes a flash, down in the stream,
Never made by perch or bream;

Then a mighty weight I feel, —
Sings the line and whirs the reel!

V.

Out of a giant tulip-tree
A great gay blossom falls on me;

Old gold and fire its petals are,
It flashes like a falling star.

A big blue heron flying by
Looks at me with a greedy eye.

I see a striped squirrel shoot
Into a hollow maple root;

A bumblebee with mail all rust,
And thighs puffed out with anther-dust,

Clasps a shrinking bloom about,
And draws her amber sweetness out.

VI.

Bubble, bubble, flows the stream,
Like a song heard in a dream.

A white-faced hornet hurtles by,
Lags a turquoise butterfly, —

One intent on prey and treasure,
One afloat on tides of pleasure!

Sunshine arrows, swift and keen,
Pierce the burr-oak's helmet green.

VII.

I follow where my victim leads
Through tangles of rank water-weeds,

O'er stone and root and knotty log,
O'er faithless bits of reedy bog.

I wonder, will he ever stop?
The reel hums like a humming top!

Through graceful curves he sweeps the line,
He sulks, he starts, his colors shine,

Whilst I, all flushed and breathless, tear
Through lady-fern and maidenhair,

And in my straining fingers feel
The throbbing of the rod and reel!

A thin sandpiper, wild with fright,
Goes into ecstasies of flight;

A gaunt green bittern quits the rushes,
The yellow-throat its warbling hushes;

Bubble, bubble, flows the stream,
Like an old tune through a dream!

VIII.

At last be tires, I reel him in;
I see the glint of scale and fin.

The crinkled halos round him break,
He leaves gay bubbles in his wake.

I raise the rod, I shorten line,
And safely land him, — he is mine!

IX.

The belted halcyon laughs, the wren
Comes twittering from his bushy den;

The turtle sprawls upon its log,
I hear the booming of a frog.

Liquidambar's keen perfume,
Sweet-punk, calamus, tulip-bloom;

Dancing wasp and dragon-fly,
Wood-thrush whistling tenderly;

Damp cool breath of moss and mould,
Noontide's influence manifold;

Glimpses of a cloudless sky, —
Soothe me as I resting lie.

Bubble, bubble, flows the stream,
Like low music through a dream.

A crossbow old, with lathe and gaffle grim,
And carven stock, hung in a castle hall —
Mere bricabrac, but on the distance dim
It sketched De Jourdan's quarrel, Richard's fall.

A curious ballad written by Villon
(The sweet old thief) — the page was wan and sere;
But genius had set a glow thereon
Like memory's flush on snows that fell last year.

A broken plow beside a hedgerow flung
Amid the flowering weeds of early June,
Told of poor Burns, who from the furrow sung
The " Banks of Ayr " and " Braes o' Bonnie Doon. "

A fossil skeleton, delicate and rare,
A bird (held fast in rock for ages long)
Freed by the quarrymen. I heard the air
Eons ago thrill to its morning song!

A southern zittern found at Avignon;
Broken its keys with pearls and opals set;
Its strings were rust, its wreathid sound-board gone,
But chords of passion wrung it fret by fret.

A leathern bottle, wrinkled, black and old,
And dry as dust of Eden's apple bloom —
Ah, but the philter that it used to hold
Haunted it with the ghost of strange perfume.

A phrase by Sappho, or a violin
Made at Cremona — all the bits of clay
That Palissy burned deathless color in —
The crudest charcoal sketches of Millet, —

How rich in charm, how redolent and ripe
And fertile is the purple mood they bring!
The heroes fight again, Pan blows his pipe,
And from the sacred groves the Muses sing.

Time spares the germs that subtle genius needs;
Forth from the blue of distance they are sent;
And poor indeed is he who never heeds
What precious hints fall from the firmament.

Aloft, arear, in caverns dark, profound,
Where no dull commonplace has ever been,
The golden web of genius is wound,
Which all the thronging world is tangled in.

Genius, that wind-worn reed, unsightly, rude,
Notched by some strong, untutored artisan;
That golden lyre, that lute of jeweled wood,
That syrinx blown by furry lips of Pan!

Ah, friend, as you read Keats one starry night,
While on the world lay dreams and mystery,
You felt a thrill, trembled, and cried outright:
" Young god! Strange boy! Let go the heart of me! "