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LIGHTLY equipped, and but a few brief looks | |
| Cast on the white cliffs of our native shore | |
| From the receding vessel’s deck, we chanced | |
| To land at Calais on the very eve | |
| Of that great federal day; and there we saw, | 5 |
| In a mean city, and among a few, | |
| How bright a face is worn when joy of one | |
| Is joy for tens of millions. Southward thence | |
| We held our way, direct through hamlets, towns | |
| Gaudy with relics of that festival, | 10 |
| Flowers left to wither on triumphal arcs, | |
| And window-garlands. On the public roads, | |
| And once three days successively through paths | |
| By which our toilsome journey was abridged, | |
| Among sequestered villages we walked, | 15 |
| And found benevolence and blessedness | |
| Spread like a fragrance everywhere, when spring | |
| Hath left no corner of the land untouched; | |
| Where elms for many and many a league in files, | |
| With their thin umbrage, on the stately roads | 20 |
| Of that great kingdom, rustled o’er our heads, | |
| Forever near us as we paced along: | |
| How sweet at such a time, with such delight | |
| On every side, in prime of youthful strength, | |
| To feed a poet’s tender melancholy | 25 |
| And fond conceit of sadness, with the sound | |
| Of undulations varying as might please | |
| The wind that swayed them; once, and more than once, | |
| Unhoused beneath the evening star, we saw | |
| Dances of liberty, and, in late hours | 30 |
| Of darkness, dances in the open air | |
| Deftly prolonged, though gray-haired lookers-on | |
| Might waste their breath in chiding. | |
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