Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?

My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,

My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?

Was ever building like my terraces?

Was ever couch magnificent as mine?

Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn

A little hut suffices like a town.

I make your sculptured architecture vain,

Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home,

And carve the coastwise mountain into caves.

Lo! here is Rome, and Nineveh, and Thebes,

Karnak, and Pyramid, and Giant’s Stairs,

Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab

Older than all thy race.

Behold the Sea,

The opaline, the plentiful and strong,

Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,

Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July;

Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,

Purger of earth, and medicine of men;

Creating a sweet climate by my breath,

Washing out harms and griefs from memory,

And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,

Giving a hint of that which changes not.

Rich are the sea-gods: – who gives gifts but they?

They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:

They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.

For every wave is wealth to Dædalus,

Wealth to the cunning artist who can work

This matchless strength. Where shall he find, O waves!

A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?

I with my hammer pounding evermore

The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust,

Strewing my bed, and, in another age,

Rebuild a continent of better men.

Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out

The exodus of nations: I disperse

Men to all shores that front the hoary main.

I too have arts and sorceries;

Illusion dwells forever with the wave.

I know what spells are laid. Leave me to deal

With credulous and imaginative man;

For, though he scoop my water in his palm,

A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds.

Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the shore,

I make some coast alluring, some lone isle,

To distant men, who must go there, or die.

TWO RIVERS

Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,

Repeats the music of the rain;

But sweeter rivers pulsing flit

Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:

The stream I love unbounded goes

Through flood and sea and firmament;

Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet,

I hear the spending of the stream

Through years, through men, through nature fleet,

Through passion, thought, through power and dream.

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,

Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;

They lose their grief who hear his song,

And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream, –

Who drink it shall not thirst again;

No darkness stains its equal gleam,

And ages drop in it like rain.

WALDEINSAMKEIT

I do not count the hours I spend

In wandering by the sea;

The forest is my loyal friend,