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(From A Boy’s Poem)
THE MORN rose blue and glorious o’er the world; | |
| The steamer left the black and oozy wharves, | |
| And floated down between dark ranks of masts. | |
| We heard the swarming streets, the noisy mills; | |
| Saw sooty foundries full of glare and gloom, | 5 |
| Great bellied chimneys tipped by tongues of flame, | |
| Quiver in smoky heat. We slowly passed | |
| Loud building yards, where every slip contained | |
| A mighty vessel with a hundred men | |
| Battering its iron sides. A cheer! a ship | 10 |
| In a gay flutter of innumerous flags | |
| Slid gayly to her home. At length the stream | |
| Broadened ’tween banks of daisies, and afar | |
| The shadows flew upon the sunny hills; | |
| And down the river, ’gainst the pale blue sky, | 15 |
| A town sat in its smoke. Look backward now! | |
| Distance has stilled three hundred thousand hearts, | |
| Drowned the loud roar of commerce, changed the proud | |
| Metropolis, which turns all things to gold, | |
| To a thick vapor o’er which stands a staff | 20 |
| With smoky pennon streaming on the air. | |
| Blotting the azure too, we floated on, | |
| Leaving a long and weltering wake behind. | |
| And now the grand and solitary hills | |
| That never knew the toil and stress of man, | 25 |
| Dappled with sun and cloud, rose far away. | |
| My heart stood up to greet the distant land | |
| Within the hollows of whose mountains lochs | |
| Moan in their restless sleep; around whose peaks, | |
| And craggy islands ever dim with rain, | 30 |
| The lonely eagle flies. The ample stream | |
| Widened into a sea. The boundless day | |
| Was full of sunshine and divinest light, | |
| And far above the region of the wind | |
| The barred and rippled cirrus slept serene, | 35 |
| With combed and winnowed streaks of faintest cloud | |
| Melting into the blue. A sudden veil | |
| Of rain dimmed all; and when the shade drew off, | |
| Before us, out toward the mighty sun, | |
| The firth was throbbing with glad flakes of light. | 40 |
| The mountains from their solitary pines | |
| Ran down in bleating pastures to the sea; | |
| And round and round the yellow coasts I saw | |
| Each curve and bend of the delightful shore | |
| Hemmed with a line of villas white as foam. | 45 |
| Far off, the village smiled amid the light; | |
| And on the level sands the merriest troops | |
| Of children sported with the laughing waves, | |
| The sunshine glancing on their naked limbs. | |
| White cottages, half smothered in rose-blooms, | 50 |
| Peeped at us as we passed. We reached the pier. | |
| Whence girls in fluttering dresses, shady hats, | |
| Smiled rosy welcome. An impatient roar | |
| Of hasty steam; from the broad paddles rushed | |
| A flood of pale green foam, that hissed and freathed | 55 |
| Ere it subsided in the quiet sea. | |
| With a glad foot I leapt upon the shore, | |
| And as I went, the frank and lavish winds | |
| Told me about the lilac’s mass of bloom, | |
| The slim laburnum showering golden tears, | 60 |
| The roses of the gardens where they played. | |
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