From “Mont Blanc”
MONT BLANC yet gleams on high:—the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,...
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From “Evangeline,” Introduction
THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean... -
From “As You Like It,” Act II. Sc. 5.
UNDER the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But Winter and rough weather.Who doth ambition shun
And... -
From “Edwin the Fair”
THE TALE was this:
The wind, when first he rose and went abroad
Through the waste region, felt himself at fault,
Wanting a voice; and suddenly to earth
Descended with a wafture and a swoop,
Where, wandering volatile from kind to kind,
He wooed the several trees to give him one.
First he besought the ash; the... -
A Song to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;
Here ’s health and renown to his broad green crown,
And his fifty arms so strong.
There ’s fear in his frown when the sun goes down,
And the fire in the west fades out;
And he showeth his might on a wild midnight,
When the storm through his branches shout... -
O Reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The holly-tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves
Ordered by an intelligence so wise
As might confound the atheist’s sophistries.Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;
No grazing cattle, through their prickly... -
THE Groves were God’s first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,—ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his... -
Next to thee, O fair gazelle,
O Beddowee girl, beloved so well;Next to the fearless Nedjidee,
Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee;Next to ye both, I love the palm,
With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm;Next to ye both, I love the tree
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three
With love and silence and mystery... -
Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm?
Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm?A ship whose keel is of palm beneath,
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath,
And a rudder of palm it steereth with.Branches of palm are its spars and rails,
Fibres of palm are its woven sails,
And the rope is... -
Lithe and long as the serpent train,
Springing and clinging from tree to tree,
Now darting upward, now down again,
With a twist and a twirl that are strange to see;
Never took serpent a deadlier hold,
Never the cougar a wilder spring,
Strangling the oak with the boa’s fold,
Spanning the beach with the condor’s wing.Yet...