Classic Poem

( CAPITAL OF COLONIAL MARYLAND)

This is the river. Like Southampton water
It enters broadly in the woody lands,
As if to break a continent asunder,
And sudden ceasing, lo! the city stands:
St. Mary's — stretching forth its yellow hands
Of beach, beneath the bluff where it commands
In vision only; for the fields are green
Above the pilgrims. Pleasant is the place;
No ruin mars its immemorial face.
As young as in virginity renewed,
Its widow's sorrows gone without a trace,
And tempting man to woo its solitude.
The river loves it, and embraces still
Its comely form with two small arms of bay,
Whereon, of old, the Calverts' pinnace lay,
The Dove — dear bird! — the olive in its bill,
That to the Ark returned from every gale
And found a haven by this sheltering hill.

Lo! all composed, the soft horizons lie
Afloat upon the blueness of the coves,
And sometimes in the mirage does the sky
Seem to continue the dependent groves,
And draw in the canoe that careless roves
Among the stars repeated round the bow.
Far off the larger sails go down the world,
For nothing worldly sees St. Mary's now;
The ancient windmills all their sails have furled,
The standards of the Lords of Baltimore,
And they, the Lords, have passed to their repose;
And nothing sounds upon the pebbly shore
Except thy hidden bell, Saint Inigo's!

There, in a wood, the Jesuits' chapel stands
Amongst the gravestones, in secluded calm.
But, Sabbath days, the censer's healing balm,
The Crucified with His extended hands,
And music of the masses, draw the fold
Back to His worship as in days of old.

Upon a cape the priest's house northward blinks,
To see St. Mary's Seminary guard
The dead that sleep within the parish yard,
In English faith — the parish church that links
The present with the perish'd, for its walls
Are of the clay that was the capital's,
When halberdiers and musketeers kept ward,
And armor sounded in the oaken halls.

A fruity smell is in the school-house lane,
The clover bees are sick with evening heats,
A few old houses from the window pane
Fling back the flame of sunset, and there beats
The throb of oars from basking oyster fleets,
And clangorous music of the oyster tongs,
Plunged down in deep bivalvulous retreats,
And sound of seine drawn home with negro songs.

Night falls as heavily in such a clime
As tired childhood after all day's play,
Waiting for mother who has passed away,
And some old nurse, with iterated rhyme
Of hymns or topics of the olden time,
Lulls wonder with her tenderness to rest:
So, old St. Mary's! at the close of day,
Sing thou to me, a truant, on thy breast!