Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/184

152 :What greetings smile, what farewells wave,
 * What loved ones enter and depart!
 * The good, the beautiful, the brave,
 * The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart!
 * How conscious seems the frozen sod
 * And beechen slope whereon they trod!

The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends.


 * I cling, as clings the tufted moss,
 * To bear the winter’s lingering chills,
 * The mocking spring’s perpetual loss.
 * I dream of lands where summer smiles,
 * And soft winds blow from spicy isles,

But scarce would Ceylon’s breath of flowers be sweet, Could I not feel thy soil. New England, at my feet!


 * And bathe in dreams of softer air,
 * But homesick tears would fill the eyes
 * That saw the Cross without the Bear.
 * The pine must whisper to the palm,
 * The north-wind break the tropic calm;

And with the dreamy languor of the Line, The North’s keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join.


 * The roaring tide of life, than lie,
 * Unmindful, on its flowery strand,
 * Of God’s occasions drifting by!
 * Better with naked nerve to bear
 * The needles of this goading air,

Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know.

to me more fair
 * Than gay Versailles or Windsor’s halls,
 * The painted, shingly town-house where
 * The freeman’s vote for Freedom falls!
 * The simple roof where prayer is made,
 * Than Gothic groin and colonnade;

The living temple of the heart of man, Than Rome’s sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan!


 * Where rich and poor the Bible read,
 * Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules,
 * And Learning wears the chains of Creed;
 * Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in
 * The scattered sheaves of home and kin,

Than the mad license ushering Lenten pains, Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance in chains.


 * And perch along these wooded swells;
 * And, blest beyond Arcadian vales,
 * They hear the sound of Sabbath bells!
 * Here dwells no perfect man sublime,
 * Nor woman winged before her time,

But with the faults and follies of the race, Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place.


 * Of mother, sister, daughter, wife,
 * The graces and the loves which make
 * The music of the march of life;
 * And woman, in her daily round
 * Of duty, walks on holy ground.

No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here Is the bad lesson learned at human rights to sneer.


 * The trumpets of the coming storm,
 * To arrowy sleet and blinding snow
 * Yon slanting lines of rain transform.
 * Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold,
 * As gayly as I did of old;

And I, who watch them through the frosty pane, Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o’er again.