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(From Columbus) I KNOW not when this hope enthralled me first, | |
But from my boyhood up I loved to hear | |
The tall pine-forests of the Apennine | |
Murmur their hoary legends of the sea, | |
Which hearing, I in vision clear beheld | 5 |
The sudden dark of tropic night shut down | |
Oer the huge whisper of great watery wastes, | |
The while a pair of herons trailingly | |
Flapped inland, where some league-wide river hurled | |
The yellow spoil of unconjectured realms | 10 |
Far through a gulfs green silence, never scarred | |
By any but the North-winds hurrying keels. | |
And not the pines alone; all sights and sounds | |
To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, | |
And catered for it as the Cretan bees | 15 |
Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, | |
Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, | |
Godlike foremusing the rough thunders gripe; | |
Then did I entertain the poets song, | |
My great Ideas guest, and, passing oer | 20 |
That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, | |
I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains | |
Whose adamantine links, his manacles, | |
The western main shook growling, and still gnawed; | |
I brooded on the wise Athenians tale | 25 |
Of happy Atlantis, and heard Björnes keel | |
Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore: | |
For I believed the poets; it is they | |
Who utter wisdom from the central deep, | |
And, listening to the inner flow of things, | 30 |
Speak to the age out of eternity. | |
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