Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Tamalpais
By Charles Warren Stoddard (1843–1909)H
How manifold thy beauties are!
I do not reckon time or space,—
I worship thy exceeding grace,
And hasten, as a flying star,
To reach thy splendor from afar.
Is dear to me; thy shadowless,
Broad noon that doth all sweets confess;
But fairer is thy even fall,
When seem to cry with airy call
Thy roses in the wilderness.
Thy deserts blithely blossoming,
Decoy me for the love of Spring.
With all thy glare and glitter spent,
Thy quiet dusk so eloquent;
Thy veil of vapors—the caress
Of Zephyrus, right cool and sweet—
I cannot wait to love thee less,—
I cling to thee with full content,
And fall a dreaming at thy feet.
Awakes me to the sinking sun
And golden glories at the Gate.
The full, strong tides, that slowly run,
Their sliding waters modulate
To indolent soft winds that wait
And lift a long web newly spun.
I see the groves of scented bay,
And night is in their fragrant mass;
But tassel-shadows swing and sway,
And spangles flash and fade away
Upon their glimmering leaves of glass,—
And there a fence of rail, quite gray,
With ribs of sunlight in the grass,—
And here a branch full well arrayed
With struggling beams a moment stayed,
Like panting butterflies afraid.
And filling every narrow vale,
The shining waters growing pale,—
The mellow-burning star of Hope
And in the wave its silver trope.
A slender shallop, feather-frail,
A pencil-mast and rocking sail.
The glooms that gather at the Gate;
The somber lines against the sky,
While dizzy gnats about me fly,
And overhead the birds go by,
Dropping a note so crystal clear,
The spirit cannot choose but hear.
The hollow moon, and up between
An oak with yard-long mosses, green
In sunlight, now as dull as crape;
The mountain softened in its shape,
Its perfect symmetry attained—
And swathed in velvet folds, and stained
With dusty purple of the grape.