As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waisthigh, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, 60 Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 70 As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Roll in on the souls of men, Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in Behold I will build me a nest on the great- On the length and the breadth of the mar ness of God: vellous marshes of Glynn. 1878. THE REVENGE OF HAMISH IT was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay; And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man, Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran Down the hillside and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way. So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn. But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below; 30 Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go All the space of an hour; then he went, an his face was greenish and stern, And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eye-balls shone, As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see. 'Now, now, grim henchman, what is 't with thee?' Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown. 'Three does and a ten-tined buck made out,' spoke Hamish, full mild, 'And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast.' Cried Maclean: 'Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child 40 I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!' Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!' So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. Now I'll to the burn,' quoth Maclean, 'for it still may be, If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me, I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!' Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame; And that place of the lashing full quiet became; And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still. But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he. There, while they stood in a green wood And marvelled still on Ill and Good, Came suddenly Minister Mind. 'In the heart of sin doth hell begin: "T is not below, 't is not above, It lieth within, it lieth within:' (Where?' quoth Love) 'I saw a man sit by a corse; Hell's in the murderer's breast: remorse! Thus clamored his mind to his mind: Not fleshly dole is the sinner's goal, Hell's not below, nor yet above, "T is fixed in the ever-damnèd soul’. 'Fixed?' quoth Love 'Fixed: follow me, would'st thou but see: He weepeth under yon willow tree, 6. Fast chained to his corse,' quoth Full soon they passed, for they rode fast, Hell,' quoth Love. i To loiter down lone alleys of delight, Freely to range, to muse, to toil, is thine: And hear the beating of the hearts of Thine, now, to watch with Homer sails that trees, 1 On Lanier's friendship with Bayard Taylor, see Professor Mims's Lanier and the Letters of Sidney Lamier, pp. 117-215. Lanier's beautiful picture of the Elysium of the Poets should be compared with Richard Hovey's, in Seaward: a Threnody on the Death of Thomas William Parsons.' bend |