Walden Spring

Whisper ye leaves your lyrics in my ear,
Carol thou glittering bird thy summer song,
And flowers, and grass, and mosses on the rocks,
And the full woods, lead me in sober aisles,
And may I seek this happy day the Cliffs,
When fluid summer melts all ores in one,
Both in the air, the water, and the ground.
And so I walked beyond the last, gray house,
And o'er the upland glanced, and down the mead,
Then turning went into the oaken copse,—
Heroic underwoods that take the air
With freedom, nor respect their parent's death.
Yet a few steps, then welled a cryptic spring,
Whose temperate nectar palls not on the taste,
Dancing in yellow circles on the sand,
And carving through the ooze a crystal bowl.
Here sometime have I drank a bumper rare,
Wetting parched lips, from a sleek, emerald leaf,
Nursed at the fountain's breast, and neatly filled
The forest-cup, filled by a woodland hand,
That from familiar things draws sudden use,
Strange to the civic eye, to Walden plain.
And resting there after my thirst was quenched,
Beneath the curtain of a civil oak,
That muses near this water and the sky,
I tried some names with which to grave this fount.
And as I dreamed of these, I marked the roof,
Then newly built above the placid spring,
Resting upon some awkward masonry.
In truth our village has become a butt
For one of these fleet railroad shafts, and o'er
Our peaceful plain, its soothing sound is—Concord,
Four times and more each day a rumbling train
Of painted cars rolls on the iron road,
Prefigured in its advent by sharp screams
That Pandemonium satisfied should hear.
The steaming tug athirst, and lacking drink,
The railroad eye direct with fatal stroke
Smote the spring's covert, and by leaden drain
Thieved its cold crystal for the engine's breast.
Strange! that the playful current from the woods,
Should drag the freighted train, chatting with fire,
And point the tarnished rail with man and trade.
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