Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/182

150   For us the Mayflower of the sea
 * Shall spread her sails no more.”

O sacred flowers of faith and hope,
 * As sweetly now as then

Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,
 * In many a pine-dark glen.

Behind the sea-wall’s rugged length,
 * Unchanged, your leaves unfold,

Like love behind the manly strength
 * Of the brave hearts of old.

So live the fathers in their sons,
 * Their sturdy faith be ours,

And ours the love that overruns
 * Its rocky strength with flowers.

The Pilgrim’s wild and wintry day
 * Its shadow round us draws;

The Mayflower of his stormy bay,
 * Our Freedom’s struggling cause.

But warmer suns erelong shall bring
 * To life the frozen sod;

And through dead leaves of hope shall spring
 * Afresh the flowers of God!


 * Plead with the leaden heavens in vain,
 * I see, beyond the valley lands,
 * The sea’s long level dim with rain.
 * Around me all things, stark and dumb,
 * Seem praying for the snows to come,

And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone, With winter’s sunset lights and dazzling morn atone.


 * The withered tufts of asters nod;
 * And trembles on its arid stalk
 * The hoar plume of the golden-rod.
 * And on a ground of sombre fir,
 * And azure-studded juniper,

The silver birch its buds of purple shows, And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose!


 * A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly,
 * Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells,
 * Like a great arrow through the sky,
 * Two dusky lines converged in one,
 * Chasing the southward-flying sun;

While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay.


 * The wind blew south; the noon of day
 * Was warm as June’s; and save that snow
 * Flecked the low mountains far away,
 * And that the vernal-seeming breeze
 * Mocked faded grass and leafless trees,

I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play.


 * The white pagodas of the snow
 * On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild,
 * Yon river, in its overflow
 * Of spring-time rain and sun, set free,
 * Crashed with its ices to the sea;

And over these gray fields, then green and gold, The summer corn has waved, the thunder’s organ rolled.

A year of time!
 * What pomp of rise and shut of day,
 * What hues wherewith our Northern clime
 * Makes autumn’s dropping woodlands gay,
 * What airs outblown from ferny dells,
 * And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells,

What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers, Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours!


 * The changing seasons come and go;
 * What spendorssplendors [sic] fall on Syrian sands,
 * What purple lights on Alpine snow!