Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/190

158   Smile and call us, as they go
 * On and onward, still before.

Guided thus, O friend of mine!
 * Let us walk our little way,

Knowing by each beckoning sign
 * That we are not quite astray.

Chase we still, with baffled feet,
 * Smiling eye and waving hand,

Sought and seeker soon shall meet,
 * Lost and found, in Sunset Land!

as if from bells of silver,
 * Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
 * Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.

A brightness which outshines the morning,
 * A splendor brooking no delay,
 * Beckons and tempts my feet away.

I leave the trodden village highway
 * For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
 * A jewelled elm-tree avenue;

Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
 * The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
 * Hold up their chandeliers of frost.

I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
 * I dream the Saga’s dream of caves
 * Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!

I walk the land of Eldorado,
 * I touch its mimic garden bowers,
 * Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!

The flora of the mystic mine-world
 * Around me lifts on crystal stems
 * The petals of its clustered gems!

What miracle of weird transforming
 * In this wild work of frost and light,
 * This glimpse of glory infinite!

This foregleam of the Holy City
 * Like that to him of Patmos given,
 * The white bride coming down from heaven!

How flash the ranked and mail-clad alders,
 * Through what sharp-glancing spears of reeds
 * The brook its muffled water leads!

Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,
 * Burns unconsumed: a white, cold fire
 * Rays out from every grassy spire.

Each slender rush and spike of mullein,
 * Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,
 * Transfigured, blaze where’er I turn.

How yonder Ethiopian hemlock
 * Crowned with his glistening circlet stands!
 * What jewels light his swarthy hands!

Here, where the forest opens southward,
 * Between its hospitable pines,
 * As through a door, the warm sun shines.

The jewels loosen on the branches,
 * And lightly, as the soft winds blow,
 * Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.

And through the clashing of their cymbals
 * I hear the old familiar fall
 * Of water down the rocky wall,

Where, from its wintry prison breaking,
 * In dark and silence hidden long,
 * The brook repeats its summer song.

One instant flashing in the sunshine,
 * Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
 * Then lost again the ice beneath.

I hear the rabbit lightly leaping,
 * The foolish screaming of the jay,
 * The chopper’s axe-stroke far away;

The clamor of some neighboring barnyard,
 * The lazy cock’s belated crow,
 * Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.

And, as in some enchanted forest
 * The lost knight hears his comrades sing,
 * And, near at hand, their bridles ring,—

So welcome I these sounds and voices,
 * These airs from far-off summer blown,
 * This life that leaves me not alone.