Another change subdues them in the Fall, But saddens not; they still show merrier tints, Though sober russet seems to cover all; When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints, Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across, Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, As Dawn's feet there had touched and left their rosy prints. Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest, Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill, While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west, Glow opposite ;- the marshes drink their fill And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade, Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's darkening hill. Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates, Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire, Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates; Then, every morn, the river's banks shine bright When guiltier arms in light shall melt away, And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from war's cramping mail. And now those waterfalls the ebbing river Twice every day creates on either side Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow, Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide. But, crowned in turn by vying seasons three, When the hid tide is at its highest flow, O'er marsh and stream one breathless trance of snow With brooding fulness awes and hushes everything. The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak wind, As pale as formal candles lit by day; Gropes to the sea the river dumb and blind; The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the storm in play, Show pearly breakers combing o'er their lee, White crests as of some just enchanted sea, Checked in their maddest leap and hanging poised mid way. But when the eastern blow, with rain aslant, Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of frost, Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch here and there. But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes Smooths off the ravelled edges of the nigh, And tones the landscape down, and soothes the wearied eyes. There gleams my native village, dear to me, Though higher change's waves each day are seen, Whelming fields famed in boyhood's history, Sanding with houses the diminished green; There, in red brick, which softening time defies, Stand square and stiff the Muses' factories; How with my life knit up is every well-known scene! Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, Your twin flows silent through my world of mind: Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! Before my inner sight ye stretch away, And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind. Beyond that hillock's house-bespotted swell, Where Gothic chapels house the horse and chaise, Where quiet cits in Grecian temples dwell, Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer and praise, Where dust and mud the equal year divide, There gentle Allston lived, and wrought, and died, Transfiguring street and shop with his illumined gaze. I have seen Virgilium vidi tantum, But as a boy, who looks alike on all, That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien, Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow,- The village blacksmith died a month ago, And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; Soon fire-new medievals we shall see Oust the black smithy from its chestnut tree, And that hewn down, perhaps, the beehive green and vast. How many times, prouder than king on throne, Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's, Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, P And watched the pent volcano's red increase, Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down By that hard arm voluminous and brown, From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees. Dear native town! whose choking elms each year And when the westering sun half-sunken burns, The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away, So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end, (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew,) Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy chinks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hangbird's flashes blend. Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e'er, Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet collegisse juvat, I am glad That here what colleging was mine I had, Nearer art thou than simply native earth, That portion of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) Than all the imperfect residue can be; The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her the impoverished seasons roll. THE GROWTH OF THE LEGEND. A FRAGMENT. A LEGEND that grew in the forest's hush Brings our youth back to us out of its shroud I see that white sea-gull. It grew and grew, And it grew itself like a true Northern pine, Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then anon Standing spear-straight in the waist-deep moss, As if they would tear up earth's heart in their grasp To shrunk snow-bearded sea-kings old songs of the brine, Of Vinland, perhaps, while their prow groped its way "Twixt the frothy gnashed tusks of some ship-crunching bay. So, pine-like, the legend grew, strong-limbed and tall, |