| |
| SING, Poet, ’t is a merry world; | |
| That cottage smoke is rolled and curled | |
| In sport, that every moss | |
| Is happy, every inch of soil;— | |
| Before me runs a road of toil | 5 |
| With my grave cut across. | |
| Sing, trailing showers and breezy downs,— | |
| I know the tragic hearts of towns. | |
| |
| City! I am true son of thine; | |
| Ne’er dwelt I where great mornings shine | 10 |
| Around the bleating pens; | |
| Ne’er by the rivulets I strayed, | |
| And ne’er upon my childhood weighed | |
| The silence of the glens. | |
| Instead of shores where ocean beats, | 15 |
| I hear the ebb and flow of streets. | |
| |
| Black Labor draws his weary waves | |
| Into their secret-moaning caves; | |
| But with the morning light | |
| That sea again will overflow | 20 |
| With a long, weary sound of woe, | |
| Again to faint in night. | |
| Wave am I in that sea of woes, | |
| Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows. | |
| |
| I dwelt within a gloomy court, | 25 |
| Wherein did never sunbeam sport; | |
| Yet there my heart was stirred,— | |
| My very blood did dance and thrill, | |
| When on my narrow window-sill | |
| Spring lighted like a bird. | 30 |
| Poor flowers! I watched them pine for weeks, | |
| With leaves as pale as human cheeks. | |
| |
| Afar, one summer, I was borne; | |
| Through golden vapors of the morn | |
| I heard the hills of sheep: | 35 |
| I trod with a wild ecstasy | |
| The bright fringe of the living sea: | |
| And on a ruined keep | |
| I sat and watched an endless plain | |
| Blacken beneath the gloom of rain. | 40 |
| |
| O, fair the lightly sprinkled waste, | |
| O’er which a laughing shower has raced! | |
| O, fair the April shoots! | |
| O, fair the woods on summer days, | |
| While a blue hyacinthine haze | 45 |
| Is dreaming round the roots! | |
| In thee, O city! I discern | |
| Another beauty, sad and stem. | |
| |
| Draw thy fierce streams of blinding ore, | |
| Smite on a thousand anvils, roar | 50 |
| Down to the harbor-bars; | |
| Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare | |
| On rainy nights, while street and square | |
| Lie empty to the stars. | |
| From terrace proud to alley base, | 55 |
| I know thee as my mother’s face. | |
| |
| When sunset bathes thee in his gold, | |
| In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled, | |
| Thy smoke is dusty fire; | |
| And from the glory round thee poured, | 60 |
| A sunbeam like an angel’s sword | |
| Shivers upon a spire. | |
| Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream! | |
| While the blue Night crept up the stream. | |
| |
| The wild train plunges in the hills, | 65 |
| He shrieks across the midnight rills; | |
| Streams through the shifting glare, | |
| The roar and flap of foundry fires, | |
| That shake with light the sleeping shires; | |
| And on the moorlands bare | 70 |
| He sees afar a crown of light | |
| Hang o’er thee in the hollow night. | |
| |
| At midnight, when thy suburbs lie | |
| As silent as a noonday sky | |
| When larks with heat are mute, | 75 |
| I love to linger on thy bridge, | |
| All lonely as a mountain ridge, | |
| Disturbed but by my foot; | |
| While the black lazy stream beneath | |
| Steals from its far-off wilds of heath. | 80 |
| |
| And through thy heart, as through a dream, | |
| Flows on that black disdainful stream; | |
| All scornfully it flows, | |
| Between the huddled gloom of masts, | |
| Silent as pines unvexed by blasts,— | 85 |
| ’Tween lamps in streaming rows, | |
| O wondrous sight! O stream of dread! | |
| O long, dark river of the dead! | |
| |
| Afar the banner of the year | |
| Unfurls: but dimly prisoned here, | 90 |
| ’T is only when I greet | |
| A dropt rose lying in my way, | |
| A butterfly that flutters gay | |
| Athwart the noisy street, | |
| I know the happy Summer smiles | 95 |
| Around thy suburbs, miles on miles. | |
| |
| ’T were neither pæan now, nor dirge, | |
| The flash and thunder of the surge | |
| On flat sands wide and bare: | |
| No haunting joy or anguish dwells, | 100 |
| In the green light of sunny dells, | |
| Or in the starry air. | |
| Alike to me the desert flower, | |
| The rainbow laughing o’er the shower. | |
| |
| While o’er thy walls the darkness sails, | 105 |
| I lean against the churchyard rails; | |
| Up in the midnight towers | |
| The belfried spire, the street is dead, | |
| I hear in silence overhead | |
| The clang of iron hours: | 110 |
| It moves me not,—I know her tomb | |
| Is yonder in the shapeless gloom. | |
| |
| All raptures of this mortal breath, | |
| Solemnities of life and death, | |
| Dwell in thy noise alone: | 115 |
| Of me thou hast become a part,— | |
| Some kindred with my human heart | |
| Lives in thy streets of stone; | |
| For we have been familiar more | |
| Than galley-slave and weary oar. | 120 |
| |
| The beech is dipped in wine; the shower | |
| Is burnished; on the swinging flower | |
| The latest bee doth sit. | |
| The low sun stares through dust of gold, | |
| And o’er the darkening heath and wold | 125 |
| The large ghost-moth doth flit. | |
| In every orchard Autumn stands, | |
| With apples in his golden hands. | |
| |
| But all these sights and sounds are strange; | |
| Then wherefore from thee should I range? | 130 |
| Thou hast my kith and kin; | |
| My childhood, youth, and manhood brave; | |
| Thou hast that unforgotten grave | |
| Within thy central din. | |
| A sacredness of love and death | 135 |
| Dwells in thy noise and smoky breath. | |
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