Seaconnet

Hail, fair Seaconnet! Glad, once more
I tread thy woodland’s mossy floor,
And wander to thy murmuring shore
           Through green savannahs starred with gold,
Where dandelions lift their shields,
           And buttercups begin t’ unfold
Their burnished petals in old fields;
But iris hides her purple leaves
                      In dark-green sheaves,
Till warmer suns their clasp unbind;
                      And waits, as well,
           Thy wee pet, scarlet pimpernel,
In wayside nooks her lovers find.

Welcome is every sight and sound,
Of wood and water, sky and ground;
           Thy old brown homesteads sheltered well,
By blooming orchards gnarled and dense,
           Where laughing girls, as blooming, dwell
With hardy, sunbrown lads, who thence
           Go forth like warriors to compel
The labored land and sullen sea
To give them tribute, full and free;
Unlike the moody Scottish seer,
                      With joy I hear,
The clarion of thy chanticleer,
That marshals the unnumbered sum
Of all his feathered Mormondom.
And pleased I see, in long white train,
Predictive of approaching rain,
                      The solemn row
Of geese that gabble as they go, –
A noisy drift of summer snow!
While dotting all the field are seen
The flossy puffs of yellow-green,
That, now so pretty, soon will grow
To great – geese; Ah! ‘tis always so!

I mark, as on the broken shore
I trace my devious way once more,
How winter’s treacherous frost and rain
Have mined the margins of the plain,
Till waters green the green sod lave,
Dragged down to perish in the wave.
For while we deem the land secure,
Rock-anchored, firmly to endure,
The hungry ocean gnaws and gnaws,
Old dotard! – with his toothless jaws;
And century after century
The green banks steal away to sea,
As lads who, weary of the farm,
Would taste the salt waves’ perilous charm.
Thus, where the plowman drove his steel
The sailor drives his furrowing keel,
Where ripening harvests waved in light
The waters roll their crests of white,
And shoals of dusky sea-cows leap
O’er fields that pastured ox and sheep!
Low mumbling still, he wears away
The jutting slopes of stubborn clay,
Spitting the grinding pebbles back
With the white slaver of his mouth!
Hoary with age he yet does lack
No vigor of his dateless youth.
When the wild raiders of the south –
The storm-winds, come on chargers black,
In wrath he rises from his lair,
Like flame his white disheveled hair
Streams upward o’er the shuddering cliff,
His voice far inland roars, as if
           Primeval thunders shook the air!
Then quiver in his charging shocks
Thy centre-rooted, rust-red rocks,
Yet, dauntless, hurling from thy shore
The loud invader, evermore
Grinding the green waves of the abyss
Into white foam, and all this roar
           Of waters to a seething hiss!

O fair Seaconnet! With thy front.
Baptized at Nature’s boundless font,
The ringing of thy granite lyre
           Is inspiration to soul and will;
Thy breath is healing, and th ekiss
           Of cool lips an inward thrill
Of tingling bliss, like sudden fire!
Thy fields are fruitful to the heart
Of fervid Poesy and Art,
As to the busy hands of toil
Whose thrift is of thy generous soil. 
           Thy ever-changing sea that cools
The fever of our sultriest days,
           Thy pastures green, with rushy pools,
Where a mild-eyed cattle drink and graze;
           Thy willows, golden limbed, that shade
           Old walls with golden moss o’erlaid;
Thy marshes clad in wiry grass,
           And tawny as a lion’s fell,
Where, still, the blue creeks wind and pass,
           And the blue heron loves to dwell;
Thy rugged sea-worn rocks that lift
           From umbered bases crests of dun;
And even the clouds that o’er thee drift
           In myriad hues of shade and sun, –
All challenge the divinest gift
           Of pen and pencil, art and song, –
           Waiting unwearied, yet how long!