Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Georgia
By Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830–1886)T
Its light fair clouds in pencilled gold and gray
Pause motionless above the pine-grown hill,
Where the pines, tranced as by a wizard’s will,
Uprise, as mute and motionless as they!
Flashed into sunlight, nor a gaunt bough stirred;
Yet, if wooed hence beneath those pines to stray,
We catch a faint, thin murmur far away,
A bodiless voice, by grosser ears unheard.
Which, though all wings of all the winds seem furled,
Nor even the zephyr’s fairy flute is blown,
Makes thus forever its mysterious moan
From out the whispering pine-tops’ shadowy world?
Doth some lone Dryad haunt the breezeless air,
Fronting yon bright illimitable blue,
And wildly breathing all her wild soul through
That strange, unearthly music of despair?
And driven far inland from the roaring lea,
Some baffled ocean-spirit, worn and lost,
Here, through dry summer’s dearth and winter’s frost,
Yearns for the sharp, sweet kisses of the sea?
Dream-touched, and musing in the tranquil morn;
All woodland sounds,—the pheasant’s gusty drum,
The mock-bird’s fugue, the droning insect’s hum,—
Scarce heard for that strange, sorrowful voice forlorn!
Of spiritual life its mournful minor flows,
Stream-like, with pensive tide, whose currents keep
Low-murmuring ’twixt the bounds of grief and sleep,
Yet looked for aye from sleep’s divine repose.
T
They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs
Which stir the fadeless foliage dreamfully,
As if from realms of mystical despairs.
Brightening to gold within the woodland’s core,
Beneath the gracious noontide’s tranquil beams,
But the weird winds of morning sigh no more.
Broods round and o’er them in the wind’s surcease,
And on each tinted copse and shimmering dell
Rests the mute rapture of deep-hearted peace.
Borne from the west when cloudless day declines,—
Low, flute-like breezes sweep the waves of light,
And lifting dark green tresses of the pines,
Fraught with hale odors up the heavens afar
To faint when Twilight on her virginal throat
Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star.
O
That brood’st serenely o’er the purpling hills;
O blissful valleys! nestling, cool and fair,
In the fond arms of yonder murmurous rills,
Breathing their grateful measures to the sun;
O dew-besprinkled paths, that circling run
Through sylvan shades and solemn silences,
Once more ye bring my fevered spirit peace!
Faint, in rare wafts of perfume, on my brow;
The woven lights and shadows, rife with calm,
Creep slantwise ’twixt the foliage, bough on bough
Uplifted heavenward, like a verdant cloud
Whose rain is music, soft as love, or loud
With jubilant hope,—for there, entranced, apart,
The mock-bird sings, close, close to Nature’s heart.
Flit ’neath the broadening glories of the morn;
The squirrel—that quaint sylvan harlequin—
Mounts the tall trunks; while swift as lightning, born
Of summer mists, from tangled vine and tree
Dart the dove’s pinions, pulsing vividly
Down the dense glades, till glimmering far and gray
The dusky vision softly melts away!
The last dim shimmer of those lessening wings,
When from lone copse and shadowy covert, hark!
What mellow tongue through all the woodland rings!
The deer-hound’s voice, sweet as the golden bell’s,
Prolonged by flying echoes round the dells,
And up the loftiest summits wildly borne,
Blent with the blast of some keen huntsman’s horn.
I climb the slope, and reach the hill-top bright;
Here, in bold freedom, swells a sovereign wind,
Whose gusty prowess sweeps the pine-clad height;
While the pines,—dreamy Titans roused from sleep,—
Answer with mighty voices, deep on deep
Of wakened foliage surging like a sea;
And o’er them smiles Heaven’s calm infinity!