Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then anon As if they would tear up earth's heart in their 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, To force up these wild births of the woods under glass, And So, if 't is told as it should be told, Though 't were sung under Venice's moonlight of gold, You would hear the old voice of its mother, the pine, Murmur sealike and Northern through every line, And the verses should hang, self-sustained and free, Round the vibrating stem of the melody, Like the lithe sun-steeped limbs of the parent tree. Yes, the pine is the mother of legends; what food For their grim roots is left when the thousand-yeared wood The dim-aisled cathedral, whose tall arches spring Light, sinewy, graceful, firm-set as the wing From Michael's white shoulder- is hewn and defaced By iconoclast axes in desperate waste, And its wrecks seek the ocean it prophesied long, Then the legends go with them, even yet on the sea A wild virtue is left in the touch of the tree, And the sailor's night-watches are thrilled to the core With the lineal offspring of Odin and Thor. Yes, wherever the pine-wood has never let in, From the midnight primeval its armful of shade, Where Aroostook, far-heard, seems to sob as he goes Blotting in giant Horrors that venture not down Through the right-angled streets of the brisk, whitewashed town, But skulk in the depths of the measureless wood 'Mid the Dark's creeping whispers that curdle the blood, When the eye, glanced in dread o'er the shoulder, may dream, Ere it shrinks to the camp-fire's companioning gleam, Which shun the keen gleam of the scholarly lamp, A CONTRAST. THY love thou sentest oft to me, And still as oft I thrust it back; Thy messengers I could not see In those who every thing did lack, Pride held his hand before mine eyes, The world with flattery stuffed mine ears; I looked to see a monarch's guise, Nor dreamed thy love would knock for years, Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears. |