Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/200

164 Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,

Steering north with raucous cry

Through tracts and provinces of sky,

Every night alighting down

In new landscapes of romance,

Where darkling feed the clamorous clans

By lonely lakes to men unknown.

Come the tumult whence it will,

Voice of sport, or rush of wings,

It is a sound, it is a token

That the marble sleep is broken,

And a change has passed on things.

When late I walked, in earlier days,

All was stiff and stark;

Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,

In the sky no spark;

Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,

Struggling through the drifted roads;

The whited desert knew me not,

Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;

The summer dells, by genius haunted,

One arctic moon had disenchanted.

All the sweet secrets therein hid

By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.

Eldest mason, Frost, had piled

Swift cathedrals in the wild;

The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts

In the star-lit minster aisled.