Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Fairhaven Bay
By George Parsons Lathrop (18511898)I
I round the hill: ’t is here it stood;
And there, beyond the crumbled walls,
The shining Concord slowly crawls,
And gently spreads its lilied bay,
Curbed by this green and reedy shore,
Up toward the ancient homestead’s door.
And makes no answer: man and mouse
Long since forsook it, and decay
Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray.
Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound;
And boldly whistles the shy quail
Within the vacant pasture’s pale.
The sun seems staring through those pines
That once the vanished home could bless
With intimate, sweet loneliness.
The feet of them that daily trod
Its roods hath utterly forgot:
The very fireplace knows them not.
The ruined chimney’s mass of brick
Lies strown. Wide heaven, with such an ease
Dost thou, too, lose the thought of these?
Lived here, in years that voiceless grew
Ere I was born,—and never can,—
Am moved, because I am a man.
O sweet elixir in the blood,
That makes us live with those long dead,
Or hope for those that shall be bred
My heart of this delicious throb;
No thought of fortunes haply wrecked,
Nor pang for nature’s wild neglect.
Though ruin all the place enfold,
These ashes that have lost their name
Shall warm my life with lasting flame!