Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
Places
By Thomas Gold Appleton (18121884)I
Our household darlings, friends which are our own,
And with them favorite haunts and cherished places,
So dear, they seem but made for us alone.
The brook the boy once loved; its scent of flowers
Comes wafted from it yet with sweet persistence,
And builds again for him those vanished hours.
His jointed fishing-rod, his bat and ball,
Till, flown from dreary days and thoughts of trouble,
His pulses still sing music through it all.
Where his thoughts travelled on the gleaming wave,
Or rose in flowering hopes, as smitten ocean
Shot jets of thundrous splendor round his cave.
And now but one, and he with faltering tread,
Feeling its grassy curves and hollows haunted
By watching eyes, whose light is with the dead.
Where dreaming idly on the summer grass,
He saw the Swiss cascades their threads unravel,
And evening strike above the shadowy pass.
Of Virgil’s sacred river; and the bees
Pillage the heavy flowers in sunlight flashing
While the doves murmur from the ilex-trees.
Sings its lament; and, doubled in the lake,
He sees himself and boat, and softly showing,
The clouds and distant hills a picture make.
Starry with clustered orange, and below
An azure dream-world, soft with indecision,
Where dulse and tangle round mosaics grow.
Hid in the heart, where love doth keep the key;
There in procession pass life’s pains and pleasures,
Fresh and undying till it cease to be.