Poems of Henry Timrod [12]
Shall kiss the rose's mouth.
Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn In the sweet airs of morn; One almost looks to see the very street Grow purple at his feet.
At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, And brings, you know not why, A feeling as when eager crowds await Before a palace gate
Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart, A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, "Behold me! I am May!"
Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime With such a bless|"ed time! Who in the west wind's aromatic breath Could hear the call of Death!
Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake The voice of wood and brake, Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, A million men to arms.
There shall be deeper hues upon her plains Than all her sunlit rains, And every gladdening influence around, Can summon from the ground.
Oh! standing on this desecrated mould, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod,
And calling, with the voice of all her rills, Upon the ancient hills To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves Who turn her meads to graves.
The Cotton Boll
While I recline At ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere! (By dusky fingers brought this morning here And shown with boastful smiles), I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns some city lane Into the restless main, With all his capes and isles!
Yonder bird, Which floats, as if at rest, In those blue tracts above the thunder, where No vapors cloud the stainless air, And never sound is heard, Unless at such rare time When, from the City of the Blest, Rings down some golden chime, Sees not from his high place So vast a cirque of summer space As widens round me in one mighty field, Which, rimmed by seas and sands, Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams Of gray Atlantic dawns; And, broad as realms made up of many lands, Is lost afar Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams Against the Evening Star! And lo! To the remotest point of sight, Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, The endless field is white; And the whole landscape glows, For many a shining league away, With such accumulated light As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! Nor lack there (for the vision grows, And the small charm within my hands -- More potent even than the fabled one, Which oped whatever golden mystery Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, The curious ointment of the Arabian tale -- Beyond all mortal sense Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see, Beneath its simple influence, As if with Uriel's crown, I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down!) Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green With all the common gifts of God, For temperate airs and torrid sheen Weave Edens of the sod; Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold Broad rivers wind their devious ways; A hundred isles in their embraces fold A hundred luminous bays; And through yon purple haze Vast mountains lift their plumed peaks cloud-crowned; And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps, An unhewn forest girds them grandly round, In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps! Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays Above it, as to light a favorite hearth! Ye Clouds, that in your
Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn In the sweet airs of morn; One almost looks to see the very street Grow purple at his feet.
At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, And brings, you know not why, A feeling as when eager crowds await Before a palace gate
Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start, If from a beech's heart, A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, "Behold me! I am May!"
Ah! who would couple thoughts of war and crime With such a bless|"ed time! Who in the west wind's aromatic breath Could hear the call of Death!
Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake The voice of wood and brake, Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, A million men to arms.
There shall be deeper hues upon her plains Than all her sunlit rains, And every gladdening influence around, Can summon from the ground.
Oh! standing on this desecrated mould, Methinks that I behold, Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, Spring kneeling on the sod,
And calling, with the voice of all her rills, Upon the ancient hills To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves Who turn her meads to graves.
The Cotton Boll
While I recline At ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere! (By dusky fingers brought this morning here And shown with boastful smiles), I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, That, with their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns some city lane Into the restless main, With all his capes and isles!
Yonder bird, Which floats, as if at rest, In those blue tracts above the thunder, where No vapors cloud the stainless air, And never sound is heard, Unless at such rare time When, from the City of the Blest, Rings down some golden chime, Sees not from his high place So vast a cirque of summer space As widens round me in one mighty field, Which, rimmed by seas and sands, Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams Of gray Atlantic dawns; And, broad as realms made up of many lands, Is lost afar Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams Against the Evening Star! And lo! To the remotest point of sight, Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, The endless field is white; And the whole landscape glows, For many a shining league away, With such accumulated light As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! Nor lack there (for the vision grows, And the small charm within my hands -- More potent even than the fabled one, Which oped whatever golden mystery Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale, The curious ointment of the Arabian tale -- Beyond all mortal sense Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see, Beneath its simple influence, As if with Uriel's crown, I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down!) Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green With all the common gifts of God, For temperate airs and torrid sheen Weave Edens of the sod; Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold Broad rivers wind their devious ways; A hundred isles in their embraces fold A hundred luminous bays; And through yon purple haze Vast mountains lift their plumed peaks cloud-crowned; And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps, An unhewn forest girds them grandly round, In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps! Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays Above it, as to light a favorite hearth! Ye Clouds, that in your