'Tis a land where no hurricane falls,

But the infinite azure regards

Its waters for ever, its walls

Of granite, its limitless swards;

Where the fens to their innermost pool

With the chorus of May are aring,

And the glades are wind-winnowed and cool

With perpetual spring;

Where folded and half withdrawn

The delicate wind-flowers blow,

And the bloodroot kindles at dawn

Her spiritual taper of snow;

Where the limits are met and spanned

By a waste that no husbandman tills,

And the earth-old pine forests stand

In the hollows of hills.

'Tis the land that our babies behold,

Deep gazing when none are aware;

And the great-hearted seers of old

And the poets have known it, and there

Made halt by the well-heads of truth

On their difficult pilgrimage

From the rose-ruddy gardens of youth

To the summits of age.

Now too, as of old, it is sweet

With a presence remote and serene;

Still its byways are pressed by the feet

Of the mother immortal, its queen:

The huntress whose tresses, flung free,

And her fillets of gold, upon earth,

They only have honour to see

Who are dreamers from birth.

In her calm and her beauty supreme,

They have found her at dawn or at eve,

By the marge of some motionless stream,

Or where shadows rebuild or unweave

In a murmurous alley of pine,

Looking upward in silent surprise,

A figure, slow-moving, divine,

With inscrutable eyes.

Where swallows and wheatfields are,

O hamlet brown and still,

O river that shineth far,

By meadow, pier, and mill:

O endless sunsteeped plain,

With forests in dim blue shrouds,

And little wisps of rain,

Falling from far-off clouds:

I come from the choking air

Of passion, doubt, and strife,

With a spirit and mind laid bare

To your healing breadth of life:

O fruitful and sacred ground,

O sunlight and summer sky,

Absorb me and fold me round,

For broken and tired am I.

How deep the April night is in its noon,

The hopeful, solemn, many-murmured night!

The earth lies hushed with expectation; bright

Above the world's dark border burns the moon,

Yellow and large; from forest floorways, strewn

With flowers, and fields that tingle with new birth,

The moist smell of the unimprisoned earth

Comes up, a sigh, a haunting promise. Soon,

Ah, soon, the teeming triumph! At my feet

The river with its stately sweep and wheel

Moves on slow-motioned, luminous, grey like steel.

From fields far off whose watery hollows gleam,

Aye with blown throats that make the long hours sweet,

The sleepless toads are murmuring in their dream.

O differing human heart,

Why is it that I tremble when thine eyes,

Thy human eyes and beautiful human speech,

Draw me, and stir within my soul

That subtle ineradicable longing

For tender comradeship?

It is because I cannot all at once,

Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists

That separate and enshroud us life from life,

Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths

Nor plumb thy depths.

I am like one that comes alone at night

To a strange stream, and by an unknown ford

Stands, and for a moment yearns and shrinks,

Being ignorant of the water, though so quiet it is,

So softly murmurous,

So silvered by the familiar moon.

O little one, daughter, my dearest,

With your smiles and your beautiful curls,

And your laughter, the brightest and clearest,

O gravest and gayest of girls;

With your hands that are softer than roses,

And your lips that are lighter than flowers,

And that innocent brow that discloses

A wisdom more lovely than ours;

With your locks that encumber, or scatter

In a thousand mercurial gleams,

And those feet whose impetuous patter

I hear and remember in dreams;

With your manner of motherly duty,

When you play with your dolls and are wise;

With your wonders of speech, and the beauty

In your little imperious eyes;

When I hear you so silverly ringing

Your welcome from chamber or stair.

When you run to me, kissing and clinging,

So radiant, so rosily fair;

I bend like an ogre above you;

I bury my face in your curls;

I fold you, I clasp you, I love you.

O baby, queen-blossom of girls!

Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair

Moved, but the growing tide from verge to verge,

Heaving salt fragrance on the midnight air,

Climbed with a murmurous and fitful surge.

A hoary mist rose up and slowly sheathed

The dripping walls and portal granite-stepped,

And sank into the inner court, and crept

From column unto column thickly wreathed.

In that dead hour of darkness before dawn,

When hearts beat fainter, and the hands of death

Are strengthened,—with lips white and drawn

And feverish lids and scarcely moving breath,

The hapless mother, tender Chione,

Beside the earth-cold figure of her child,

After long bursts of weeping sharp and wild

Lay broken, silent in her agony.

At first in waking horror racked and bound

She lay, and then a gradual stupor grew

About her soul and wrapped her round and