Classic Poem

In a quaint cottage in the Acadian land
A poet's youth was spent,
Where waving dykes await the mower's hand
And orchards almost drown the air with scent.

In rambling picturesqueness on a hill,
Clad with luxuriant vines the cottage stood,
With gardens back where one could watch at will
The rich red tides sweep up from Fundy's flood.

On the dark walls within, the livelong day,
The sunbeams wove patterns of loveliest grace
And many a morn the boy half-conscious lay
And dreamed that round him hung like folds of lace

Fine purple fabrics woven by Indian looms
For princely palace walls inlaid with gold;
That subtle-textured stuffs bedecked the rooms
And splendid tapestries with scenes of old,

And shimmering silks; that unknown hands had drest
With them the winding halls and parlours square,
Draped the deep windows looking east and west
And made the old mansion plain a palace fair.

Such things he pictured till the morn went by,
Then the mixed colours that his garden wore,
The shadowy elms, the soft clouds floating by
To loftier realms his fervid fancy bore.

Visions of heavenly beauty haunted him,
The velvet dykes, the fields in which he strayed,
The blossoming orchards, even the forest dim,
Were thronged with spirit-forms that round him played.

Who does not love the place where first he knew
Imagination's wondrous witchery,
Where his cramped soul first gathered wings and flew
Beyond the accustomed bounds of sky or sea;

Who, travelling onward toward the setting sun
Keeps not in tender thought his earliest feast
Of beauty, when amidst sweet scenes he spun
Ecstatic visions, being nature's priest?

Gone is the cottage where in fresh day dreams
The boy to lovely lands first winged his flight,
Drank deep, delicious draughts from beauty's streams
And felt the glory that sweeps round our night,

But the same sense of colour, form, and sound
Lives in him, and he knows that by and by,
Back of disharmony, when the Truth is found,
Beauty unspeakable will be seen to lie.