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| BECAUSE I was content with these poor fields, | |
| Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, | |
| And found a home in haunts which others scorned, | |
| The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, | |
| And granted me the freedom of their state, | 5 |
| And in their secret senate have prevailed | |
| With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, | |
| Made moon and planets parties to their bond, | |
| And through my rock-like, solitary wont | |
| Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. | 10 |
| For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring | |
| Visits the valley; break away the clouds,— | |
| I bathe in the morn’s soft and silvered air, | |
| And loiter willing by you loitering stream. | |
| Sparrows far off, and nearer, April’s bird, | 15 |
| Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree, | |
| Courageous, sing a delicate overture | |
| To lead the tardy concert of the year. | |
| Onward and nearer rides the sun of May; | |
| And wide around, the marriage of the plants | 20 |
| Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain | |
| The surge of summer’s beauty; dell and crag, | |
| Hollow and lake, hillside, and pine arcade, | |
| Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged cliff | |
| Has thousand faces in a thousand hours. | 25 |
| Beneath low hills, in the broad interval | |
| Through which at will our Indian rivulet | |
| Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw, | |
| Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies, | |
| Here in pine houses built of new-fallen trees, | 30 |
| Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell. | |
| Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious road, | |
| Or, it may be, a picture; to these men, | |
| The landscape is an armory of powers, | |
| Which, one by one, they know to draw and use. | 35 |
| They harness beast, bird, insect, to their work; | |
| They prove the virtues of each bed of rock, | |
| And, like the chemist mid his loaded jars, | |
| Draw from each stratum its adapted use | |
| To drug their crops or weapon their arts withal. | 40 |
| They turn the frost upon their chemic heap, | |
| They set the wind to winnow pulse and grain, | |
| They thank the spring-flood for its fertile slime, | |
| Earlier, on cheap summit-levels of the snow, | |
| Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods | 45 |
| O’er meadows bottomless. So, year by year, | |
| They fight the elements with elements, | |
| (That one would say, meadow and forest walked, | |
| Transmuted in these men to rule their like,) | |
| And by the order in the field disclose | 50 |
| The order regnant in the yeoman’s brain. | |
| |
| What these strong masters wrote at large in miles | |
| I followed in small copy in my acre; | |
| For there ’s no rood has not a star above it; | |
| The cordial quality of pear or plum | 55 |
| Ascends as gladly in a single tree | |
| As in broad orchards resonant with bees; | |
| And every atom poises for itself, | |
| And for the whole. The gentle deities | |
| Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds, | 60 |
| The innumerable tenements of beauty, | |
| The miracle of generative force, | |
| Far-reaching concords of astronomy | |
| Felt in the plants, and in the punctual birds: | |
| Better, the linked purpose of the whole, | 65 |
| And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty | |
| In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave. | |
| The polite found me impolite; the great | |
| Would mortify me, but in vain; for still | |
| I am a willow of the wilderness, | 70 |
| Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts | |
| My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, | |
| A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, | |
| A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine, | |
| Salve my worst wounds. | 75 |
| For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear: | |
| “Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie? | |
| Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass | |
| Into the winter night’s extinguished mood? | |
| Canst thou shine now, then darkle, | 80 |
| And being latent feel thyself no less? | |
| As when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, | |
| The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure, | |
| Yet envies none, none are unenviable.” | |
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