Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.
By Descriptive SonnetsHenry Pickering (17811838)
T
And as the sunbeams on its surface gleam
It seems as if upon the rippled stream
A shower of diamonds fell: or as if there,
Fantastic knit in frolic mood, some fair
Invisible Spirits in the instant wound
On airy tiptoe through the measured round,
And left their dazzling foot-prints everywhere.
’T is a glad sight! and many a time I ’ve stood
Upon the fringed banks the streamlets lave,
Or perch’d me where some rock o’erhangs the flood,
To see the light thus kiss each little wave:
Ay! gaze even yet almost with the same joy
As when I was a young gay-hearted boy.
S
Even bends—and as the unruly wind sweeps through
Its sturdy branches, showers of leaves bestrew
The ground, or diverse fly; the crow, just broke
From out the warring wood, with ominous croak
Wheels heavily through air; the glorious hue
Of the bright mantle summer lately threw
O’er earth, is gone; and the sere leaves now choke
The turbid fountains and complaining brooks;
The o’ershadowing pines, alone, through which I rove,
Their verdure keep, although it darker looks:
And hark! as it comes sighing through the grove,
The exhausted gale a Spirit there awakes,
That wild and melancholy music wakes.
S
And see, on flagging wing, the storm retreats
Far ’mid the depths of space; and with him fleets
His lurid train—the while in beauty glow
Vale, hill and sky once more. How lustrous now
Earth’s verdant mantle! and the woods how bright!
Where grass, leaf, flower, are sparkling in the light—
Prompt ever with the slightest breeze to throw
The rain drops to the ground. Within the grove
Music awakes; and from each little throat,
Silent so long, bursts the wild note of love;
The hurried babblings of the rill denote
Its infant joy; and rushing swift along,
The torrent gives to air, its hoarse and louder song.
H
Upon the lap of the unbreathing vale,
And where, unruffled by the gentlest gale,
The lake its bosom spreads, and in its deep
Clear wave, another world appears to keep,
To steal the heart from this! for through the veil
Transparent we may see, tree, rock, hill, dale,
And sapphire sky, and golden mountain steep,
That real seem, though fairer than our own:—
Still, picture faint of that pure region drawn
By prophet’s pen, but not to mortal shown,
Where flow rivers of bliss—and vale, and lawn
Are strewn with flowers immortal—where, alone,
Night never comes, and day is without dawn.