AWAY.
Reading edition
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B. B.
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Floateth in upon my senses now the melody of brooks,
And the drip of fragrant waters, far in solitary nooks—
O avaunt! ye tedious tasks! O get ye gone! ye irksome books.
Why to linger pent and stifled in this chamber small and low,
Through the casement on my temples thus to feel the breezes blow,
Bidding me to come and follow where at liberty they go?
Why amid this noisy Babel mingle in the petty strife,
In the wearying din and discord with which every day is rife,
While the full, free life within me yearns to greet its kindred life?
O, those boundless breadths of forest unrestrained to wander through,
Where the lofty pine mounts upward to the firmament of blue,
Where the swarth and stalwart savage paddles in his birch canoe.
O, to hear my ringing shout of exultation echo clear
In the woodland, by the moose-tramp and the covert of the deer,
Or where stalk the stately bison who have never known to fear,
On the broad and blooming pampas, with their fat and teeming soil
Never marred by human culture, never by unwilling toil,
Where the wild herds roam uninjured, and the gleaming serpents coil.
Or where crawls the full-fed Ganges down into his sandy bed,
And the sluggish hippopotamus uprears his clumsy head,
Where the beauty-bringing cestus of the torrid zone is spread.
Where many a glowing river rolls along its wealth of tide
Through the tangled vines and palm-trees bending down on either side,
With the orange bloom and citron, and the tall acacia’s pride.
Where the scaly cayman basking on the yellow bank is laid,
And the brilliant-plumaged song-birds call in every spicy glade,
There to hunt the spotted leopard in the jungle’s depth of shade.
Or beyond the spreading oceans, in some distant Paynim land,
Swifter than the fiery simoom sweep across the plains of sand,
On a fleet and naked barb, and wield a keenly flashing brand.
O for days of careless gladness, days that evermore are gone,
When the spirit-thrilling summons of the silver bugle-horn
Roused the green-clad host of merry men at break of dewy morn.
—Cease thy prating, foolish Fancy, Fancy wayward, unconfined,
List the mighty music rushing on the pinions of the wind,
’Tis the onward tread of nations, ’tis the endless march of mind.
Bowdoin College.