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IN my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain | |
| Of the live-oak, the marsh and the main. | |
| The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep. | |
| Upbreathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep. * * * * * | |
| I have waked, I have come, my belovèd! I might not abide: | 5 |
| I have come ere the dawn, O belovèd! my live-oaks, to hide | |
| In your gospelling glooms—to be | |
| As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh, and the sea my sea. | |
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| Tell me, sweet burly-barked man-bodied Tree | |
| That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know | 10 |
| From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow? | |
| They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps. | |
| Reason ’s not one that weeps. | |
| What logic of greeting lies | |
| Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes? | 15 |
| O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss | |
| All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss | |
| The vague blackness of night with pattern and plan, * * * * * | |
| Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves, | |
| Oh! rain me down from your darks that contain me | 20 |
| Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me: | |
| Soft down tremors of sweet-within-sweet, | |
| That advise me of more than they bring; repeat | |
| Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought health | |
| From the heaven-side bank of the river of death; | 25 |
| Teach me the terms of silence, preach me | |
| The passion of patience, sift me, impeach me; | |
| And there, oh! there, | |
| As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air, | |
| Pray me a myriad prayer. | 30 |
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| My gossip, the owl, is it thou | |
| That out of the leaves of the low hanging bough, | |
| As I pass to the beach, art stirred? | |
| Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird? | |
| Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea, | 35 |
| Old Chemist, rapt in alchemy. | |
| Distilling silence, lo! | |
| That which our father-age had died to know, | |
| The menstruum that dissolves all matter—thou | |
| Hast found it; for this silence, filling now | 40 |
| The globèd clarity of receiving space, | |
| This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace, | |
| Death, love, sin, sanity, | |
| Must in your silence, clear solution lie. | |
| Too clear! that crystal nothing who ’ll peruse? | 45 |
| The blackest night could bring us brighter news. | |
| Yet precious qualities of silence haunt | |
| Round these vast margins, ministrant. | |
| Oh! if thy soul ’s at latter gasp for space, | |
| With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race | 50 |
| Just to be fellowed, when that thou hast found | |
| No man with room or grace enough of bound | |
| To entertain that New thou tell’st, thou art— | |
| ’T is here, ’t is here thou canst unhand thy heart | |
| And breathe it freely, and breathe it free | 55 |
| By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty. | |
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| The tide ’s at full; the marsh with flooded streams | |
| Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams. | |
| Each winding creek in grave entrancement lies, | |
| A rhapsody of morning stars. The skies | 60 |
| Shine scant with one forked galaxy— | |
| The marsh brags ten; looped on his breast they lie. | |
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| Oh! what if a sound should be made! | |
| Oh! what if a bound should be laid | |
| To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring, | 65 |
| To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string! | |
| I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam | |
| Will break as a bubble o’erblown in a dream, | |
| Yon dome of too tenuous tissues of space and of night, | |
| Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light, | 70 |
| Oversated with beauty and silence, will seem | |
| But a bubble that broke in a dream, | |
| If a bound of degree to this grace be said | |
| Or a sound or a motion made. | |
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| But no: it is made; list! somewhere—mystery! where? | 75 |
| In the leaves? in the air? | |
| In my heart? is a motion made: | |
| ’T is a motion of dawn, like a flicker of shade on shade | |
| In the leaves, ’t is palpable; low multitudinous stirring | |
| Upwinds through the woods; the little ones, softly conferring, | 80 |
| Have settled, my lord ’s to be looked for; so; they are still; | |
| But the air and my heart and the earth are a-thrill. | |
| And look where the wild duck sails around the bend of the river; | |
| And look where a passionate shiver | |
| Expectant is bending the blades | 85 |
| Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and shades; | |
| And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast fleeting, are beating | |
| The dark overhead as my heart beats; and steady and free | |
| Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea. | |
| (Run home, little streams, | 90 |
| With your lapful of stars and dreams), | |
| And a sailor is hoisting a-peak; | |
| For list! down the inshore curve of the creek | |
| How merrily flutters the sail, | |
| And lo! in the East! Will the East unveil? | 95 |
| The East is unveiled, the East has confessed | |
| A flush! ’t is dead! ’t is alive! ’t is dead ere the West | |
| Was aware of it! nay, ’t is abiding, ’t is unwithdrawn! | |
| Have a care, sweet Heaven! ’T is Dawn! | |
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| Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled: | 100 |
| To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold | |
| Is builded, in shape as a beehive, from out of the sea; | |
| The hive is of gold undazzling; but oh! the Bee, | |
| The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee, | |
| Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-Bee | 105 |
| That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea. | |
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| Yet now the dew-drop, now the morning gray | |
| Shall live their little lucid, sober day; | |
| Ere with the Sun their souls exhale away. | |
| Now in each pettiest, personal sphere of dew | 110 |
| The summed morn shines complete as in the blue, | |
| Big dew-drop of all Heaven. With these lit shrines | |
| O’er silvered to the furtherest sea-confines, | |
| The sacramental marsh, one pious plain | |
| Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign | 115 |
| Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild, | |
| Minded of naught but peace and of a Child. | |
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| Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean and a measure | |
| Of motion, not faster than dateless Olympian leisure | |
| Might pace with unblown ample garments from pleasure to pleasure; | 120 |
| The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling, | |
| Forever revealing, revealing, revealing, | |
| Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise—’t is done! | |
| Good morrow, lord Sun! | |
| With several voice, with ascription one, | 125 |
| The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul | |
| Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll, | |
| Cry good, and past good, and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun! * * * * * | |
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