Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/258

226   For though by the Master’s feet untrodden,
 * Though never His word has stilled thy waves,

Well for us may thy shores be holy,
 * With Christian altars and saintly graves.

And well may we own thy hint and token
 * Of fairer valleys and streams than these,

Where the rivers of God are full of water,
 * And full of sap are His healing trees!

in the stately towns,
 * What come ye out to see?

This common earth, this common sky,
 * This water flowing free?

As gayly as these kalmia flowers
 * Your door-yard blossoms spring;

As sweetly as these wild-wood birds
 * Your cagëd minstrels sing.

You find but common bloom and green
 * The rippling river’s rune,

The beauty which is everywhere
 * Beneath the skies of June;

The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn plumes
 * Of old pine-forest kings,

Beneath whose century-woven shade
 * Deer Island’s mistress sings.

And here are pictured Artichoke,
 * And Curson’s bowery mill;

And Pleasant Valley smiles between
 * The river and the hill.

You know full well these banks of bloom,
 * The upland’s wavy line,

And how the sunshine tips with fire
 * The needles of the pine.

Yet, like some old remembered psalm,
 * Or sweet, familiar face,

Not less because of commonness
 * You love the day and place.

And not in vain in this soft air
 * Shall hard-strung nerves relax,

Not all in vain the o’erworn brain
 * Forego its daily tax.

The lust of power, the greed of gain
 * Have all the year their own;

The haunting demons well may let
 * Our one bright day alone.

Unheeded let the newsboy call,
 * Aside the ledger lay:

The world will keep its treadmill step
 * Though we fall out to-day.