Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Green Mountain
By John Weiss (18181879)W
To kindred gladness that, beyond the wood
Whose pines are heavy with the solitude,
Sacks all the space of sea and sky sublime.
With sweet and happy hearts at summer-tide;
O’er cliff and ledge and wave goes laughter wide,
As o’er the sea noon’s pelting silver rain.
To forage all along the shining waste;
Now huddled, and now scattering, without haste,
For morning waifs, like sea-birds, each one steers.
There ’s one that takes my own mood out to sea:
Its laughing side is hidden on the lee;
Its shadow tacks to windward all the while.
Wafts me apart, but not to scowl and gloom;
The world’s wide laughter keeps me in its room,—
My shadow is not sharp enough to swerve.
A cloud has caught its buoyant, gilded woof,
Too thin to keep the sailor’s heart aloof:
He ’s comrade still of all the happy scene.