How like a girl that into maiden glides

How like a girl that into maiden glides
The spring has melted into June! O how
She dashed her May of life away, and tied
Her long uncumbered tresses in these knots,
These neat confined braids that gird her brow,
Put off her girlish figure springing free,
Her loose attire half-gathered to a plan,
Soothed her capricious form panting with play,
And 'neath the trees her fair companions round
Told them this charming tale to end the day.
Could she not shout a little longer wild,
And in her dark and roguish eyes proclaim
The graver secret, that the half-staid girl
Carelessly cool reserves, when on her tongue,
As if a breath would from its tip, throw off
The sudden meaning? There's no stay to life,—
We thought to pause on May, to hold the world
One moment to itself, to keep her fast,
One long long joyous day, all Spring, and lo!
The foliaged June sways her soft drapery
O'er the waving mead, smiles in the grass,
And pranks Senecios on the side
Of the consumptive ditch.
Yet the Rice-bird,
From the murky south come speeding fast,
Flings from his yellow crown a pulse of heat,
And if the Blue-bird and his mellow trill,
(A kind of joy half-uttered) brings the year,
The hardy Bobolink profuse of notes
O'erflowing, deluges the liberal air,
Exuberant, as if his compact frame
Could not contain his sounds, but in his pang
Of never-ceasing melody his throat
Too rash distended, might defect and end
By one intense crescendo all his strain!
So, it is fabled, that in contest, rare,
The ambitious nightingale expires, her power
Crushed by some instrument that to man's touch,
Volumed a nobler music.
On every hand
Now wakes an insect world, raised from close sheaths,
Strange transformations and unnoticed silks,
Spun in low marshes by imperial worms.
Their scaly lances on the wood-path dash,
Glittering like men-at-arms, the Dragon-flies,
Nerved to the core, and Whirligigs in maze
Weave their continual circles o'er the pool
With their dusk boat-like bodies, things of joy.
Nor fail to note the thick Empheridæ,
That dance along the stream, food for a tribe
Almost as countless of quick-leaping fish.
The Swifts on cutting wing dash through the swarm,
And the familiar Swallow, poet birds.
There are no poor in Nature; only man,
And mostly he who lumbers in the train
Of the commercial city, pride of power.
Where from low allies and thick reeking lanes
The putrid mass of slow corruption breathes,
Infests the air, and with its sallow host
Spawns ragged children for as ragged sire.
Yet man, with his strange ills, deems himself first,—
Lord of the world, and calls the orbs his own,
Because with artificial eye he sweeps their round,
Poor phantom of an hour, graved in the dust;
While bee and beetle his interment make,
And even the owls from some perpetual oak
More stately and ancestral piles inhabit
Than all his short-span race!
But yesterday,
Our fathers pulled their boats ashore and touched
The rock, and now we are an empire, free,—
So free, so utterly free, that never,
No, not in Rome's barbaric hour, when slaves
Of lust, were garnered in from all her lands,
Did such a base and cruel wrong e'er soil
The purple of her conquerors, as spots
The unstained ermine of these blood-dyed States.
I speak of Afric's wrongs, unnumbered wrongs!
So that the summer o'er their wretched huts
Wakes but a fiercer fire of wild revenge,
And shrivels up the mind that rightly sees,
How yet that desolation must ensue,
Fruit of long-chosen sin that could be shunned,
But would not!
Not on the high road, not in dusty cars
Loud-thundering o'er their iron vertebræ,
Where in close boxes sweltering with the speed
Nod in newspaper dreams the broadcloth world;—
Nor with capricious haste of foaming steeds,
Essay thou, rather along the river's smooth
Untenanted domain gliding in peace,
Steal with soft fancies in a silent bark.
On every side the green contrivings wave,
The friendly Willows nodding all their plumes,
Carved Arrowheads and Calla broadly-leaved,
And burr-reed spined, nor slight the floating orbs,
Anchored companions of thy moving thought,
The life of lilies, where the Nuphar's disk
In richest yellow floats its gold repose,
And smaller yet as brave, the Kalmian buds.
O holy rest, O ripe tranquillity!
For who shall dream in what uncounted years,
These realms of peace e'er bent at ruin's knee,
Or when that primal burst, the ancient chaos
Racked these courteous aisles? Rather the arches,
Where the King-bird rears his grassy throne,
And strikes the nerve-fly, strong in tyrant-pride,
Amply excepted from the general roar,
When in the whirling war all seeds of things
Together mixt, shook to their base old empires,—
These soft scenes, wholly at peace still smiled,
As now they smile, and took the sunsets
In their peaceful arms and rocked them sleeping.
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