Classic Poem

There is a calm lagoon,
Hid in the bosom of a cypress grove;
Around deep shade, above
The tropic sun pours down the heat of noon.
The aged fathers of the forest wave
Their giant arms athwart the gloom below,
And as the winds in fitful breathing blow,
Their rush is like the tide's resounding flow,
Or sighs above a maiden's early grave.
The long moss hangs its hair,
In hoary festoons, on from tree to tree:
Lianas, twining there,
Ramble around the forest, wild and free;
They wave their bowering canopy,
Impervious to the faintest ray of light;
The softest dew of night
Steals never through its mantling tapestry,
With blue and starry blossoms spangled o'er;
And scarlet fruits, in clusters hung,
Low bending, shine around the winding shore,
Brighter than aught Hesperian gardens bore,
Or Eastern bard, in vine-clad arbor, sung.

And on that calm lagoon
The water-lilies float;
Blue, as the deepest tinctured sky at noon,
Or white, as new-fallen mountain snow,
Or died in carmine, like the stain
Of clouds that on the verge of morning glow,
Or golden, as the setting beam,
When flashing on the burnished stream,
Or veiled in mellow tinctures, like the flow
Of milk and wine dissolving, or the plain
Of ether, when its starry bow
O'erspans the arch of midnight, as a belt,
Or like the pearl and topaz, when they melt
Their soft reflections in the folded chain,
Around the fairest neck of beauty hung, —
So sit they calmly in their cups, or swung
Along the surface of the rippling wave,
Whether the spirits of the air awake,
And sport, with glancing pinions, on the lake,
Or slumber in their silent cave.