Classic Poem

The sun is up, and through the woods
His golden rays are streaming;
The dismal swamp and swale so damp
With faces bright are beaming.
Down in the windfall by the creek
We hear the partridge drumming,
And strange bright things on airy wings
Are all around us humming.

The merry schoolboys in the woods
The chipmunk are pursuing,
And, as he starts, with happy hearts
They're after him hallooing.
The squirrel hears the urchins' cheers—
They never catch him lagging—
And on the beech, beyond their reach,
Hear how the fellow's bragging!

The red-bird pauses in his song,
The face of man aye fearing,
And flashes like a flame along
The border of the clearing.
The humming-bird above the flow'r
Is like a halo bending,
Or like the gleams we catch in dreams,
Of heav'nly things descending.

List to the humming of the bee
Among the tufted clover!
This day, like thee, I'll wander free,
My little wildwood rover!
Through groves of beech and maple green,
And pines of lofty stature,
By this lone creek once more we'll seek
The savage haunts of nature.

See! there a noble troop of pines
Has made a sudden sally,
And all, in straight unbroken lines,
Are rushing up the valley;
Now round about that lonely spring
They gather in a cluster,
Then off again, till on the plain
The great battalions muster.

And there the little evergreens
Are clust'ring in the hollows,
And hazels green with sumachs lean
Among the weeping willows;
Or sit in pride the creek beside,
Or through the valley ramble,
Or up the height in wild delight
Among the rocks they scramble.

And here a gorge all reft and rent,
With rocks in wild confusion,
As they were by the wood-gods sent
To guard them from intrusion;
And gulfs all yawning wild and wide,
As if by earthquakes shatter'd;
And rocks that stand, a grizzly band,
By time and tempest batter'd.

Some great pines, blasted in their pride,
Above the gorge are bending,
With rock elms from the other side
Their mighty arms extending;
And midway down the dark descent
One fearful hemlock's clinging—
His headlong fall he would prevent,
And grapnels out is flinging.

One ash has ventured to the brink,
And tremblingly looks over
That awful steep, where shadows sleep,
And mists at noonday hover.
But farther in the woods we go,
Through beech and maple alleys,
'Mid elms that stand like patriarchs grand
In long dark leafy valleys.

Away! away from blue-eyed day,
The sunshine and the meadows,
We find our way at noon of day
Within the Hall of Shadows.
How like a great cathedral vast,
With creeping vines roof'd over,
While shadows dim, with faces grim,
Far in the distance hover.

Among the old cathedral aisles,
And gothic arches bending,
And ever, in the sacred piles,
The twilight gloom's descending.
Yet, let me turn where'er I will,
A step is aye pursuing;
And there's an eye upon me still
That's watching all I'm doing.

And in the centre there's a pool,
And by that pool is sitting
A shape of Fear, with shadows drear,
Forever round her flitting.
Why is her face so full of woe,
So hopeless and dejected?
Sees she but there, in her despair,
Naught buTherself reflected?

Is it the gloom within my heart,
Or ling'ring superstition,
Which draws me here three times a year
To this weird apparition?
I cannot tell what it may be:
I only know that seeing
That shape of Fear draws me more near
The secret Soul of Being.