English

So long ago that history pays
No heed nor record of how long,
Back in the lovely dreamy days,
The days of story and of song,

Before the world had crowded grown,
While wrong on earth was hard to find,
And half the lands had never known
The forms and faces of mankind,

When just as now the years would keep
Their terms of snows and suns and showers,
It chanced that Summer dropt asleep,
One morning, in a field of flowers.

And while the warm weeks came and fled,

Oh, we do fairly well on this little back star,
This world in the suburbs of space,
Though we're out here alone, and we hardly know how
To get our belongings in place.
We've no other models to which to conform,
We've no other star for a plan,
And we think for a young and a little back star,
We have done nigh as well as we can.
And so we abide here with things as they are
In our cosmical suburb, our little back star.

'Tis mostly unfinished, our little back star,
(Takes time for a world to get made),

About her sweet majestic head
The locks are simply filleted;
Serene she stands, with starry eyes,
Profoundly meek, sublimely wise!

A goddess of surpassing fame,
She sees no stately altars flame;
Within her grove there looms alone
A shrine of harsh Druidic stone.

But all the roads that hither wind
With splintry jeopardy are lined,
Where savage gales in shrouds of sleet
Like awful lovers wildly meet!

And through the years, to reach her home
A few pale silent pilgrims come;

What is this iron music
Whose strains are borne afar?
The hammers of the world-smiths
Are beating out a star.
They build our old world over,
Anew its mould is wrought,
They shape the plastic planet
To models of their thought.
This is the iron music
Whose strains are borne afar;
The hammers of the world-smiths
Are beating out a star.

We hear the whirling sawmill
Within the forest deep;
The wilderness is clipped like wool,
The hills are sheared like sheep.
Down through the fetid fenways

Napoleon took Europe and tossed down toppling thrones,
And strewed its ghastly hillsides with white and bleaching bones;
And dandled kings like puppets and made his world-uproar,
And played his battailous music, passed, and was heard no more.

Sam Pasco took a run-down farm, a run-down farm, alas!
Where stretched unbroken solitudes between each spear of grass.
And moss usurped its hillsides and flags usurped its meads,
And both its hills and meadows were a tragedy of weeds.

Sam Pasco's hard campaigning! Long waged the stubborn fray;

Deare wood, and you, sweet solitarie place,
Where from the vulgare I estranged liue,
Contented more with what your shades mee giue,
Than if I had what Thetis doth embrace;
What snakie eye, growne iealous of my peace,
Now from your silent horrours would mee driue,
When sunne, progressing in his glorious race
Beyond the Twinnes, doth neare our pole arriue?
What sweet delight a quiet life affords,
And what it is to bee of bondage free,
Farre from the madding worldling's hoarse discords,

Shee whose faire flowrs no autumne makes decay,
Whose hue celestiall, earthly hues doth staine,
Into a pleasant odoriferous plaine
Did walke alone, to braue the pride of Maye;
And whilst through checkred lists shee made her way,
Which smil'd about her sight to entertaine,
Loe, vnawares, where Loue did hid remaine,
Shee spide, and sought to make of him her prey;
For which, of golden lockes a fairest haire,
To binde the boy, she tooke; but hee, afraid
At her approach, sprang swiftly in the aire,

Is't not enough, aye mee! mee thus to see
Like some heauen-banish'd ghost still wailing goe,
A shadow which your rayes doe only show?
To vexe mee more, vnlesse yee bid mee die,
What could yee worse allotte vnto your foe?
But die will I, so yee will not denie
That grace to mee which mortall foes euen trie,
To chuse what sort of death should ende my woe.
One time I found when as yee did me kisse,
Yee gaue my panting soule so sweet a touch,
That halfe I sown'd in midst of all my blisse;

When as shee smiles I finde
More light before mine eyes,
Nor when the sunne from Inde
Brings to our world a flowrie Paradise:
But when shee gently weepes,
And powres foorth pearlie showres
On cheekes' faire blushing flowres,
A sweet melancholie my senses keepes.
Both feede so my disease,
So much both doe me please,
That oft I doubt, which more my heart doth burne,
Like loue to see her smile, or pitie mourne.

Who hath not seene into her saffron bed
The morning's goddesse mildly her repose,
Or her, of whose pure bloud first sprang the rose,
Lull'd in a slumber by a mirtle shade?
Who hath not seene that sleeping white and red
Makes Phaebe look so pale, which shee did close
In that Ionian hill, to ease her woes,
Which only liues by nectare kisses fed?
Come but and see my ladie sweetly sleepe,
The sighing rubies of those heauenly lips,
The Cupids which brest's golden apples keepe,
Those eyes which shine in midst of their ecclipse,