Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By EvaleenStein

1509 Flood-Time on the Marshes

DEAR marshes, by no hand of man

Laboriously sown,

My river clasps you in its arms

And claims you for its own!

It laughs, and laughs, and twinkles on

Across the reedy soil,

That heed of harvest vexes not,

Nor need of any toil.

And in my heart I joy to know

That safe within this spot

Sweet nature reigns; let other fields

Bear bread, it matters not.

—What matters aught of anything

When one may drift away

Into the realms of all-delight,

As I drift on to-day?

Beneath the budded swamp-rose sprays

The blue-eyed grasses stand,

Submerged within a crystal world,

A limpid wonderland;

And where the clustered sedges show

Their silky-tasselled sheaves,

The slender arrow-lily lifts

Its quiver of green leaves.

The tiny waves lap softly past,

So musical and round,

I think they must be moulded out

Of sunshine and sweet sound.

And here and there some little knoll,

More lofty than the rest,

Stands out above the happy tide,

An island of the blest;

Where fringed with lacy fronds of fern

The grass grows rich and high,

And flowering spider-worts have caught

The color of the sky;

Where water-oaks are thickly strung

With green and golden balls,

And from tall tilting iris tips

The wild canary calls.

—O gracious world! I seem to feel

A kinship with the trees;

I am first-cousin to the marsh,

A sister to the breeze!

My heartstrings tremble to its touch,

In throbs supremely sweet,

And through my pulses light and life

And love divinely meet.

Far off, the sunbeams smite the woods,

And pearly fleeces sail

Athwart the light, and leave below

A purple-shadowed trail;

The essence of the perfect June

So subtly is distilled,

Until my very soul of souls

Is filled, and overfilled!