Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of
vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green
colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
That run to the radiant margianl sand-beach within
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,--
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of
leaves,--
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul
that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the
wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;--
O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the
vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did
shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in
mine;
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,--
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of
the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound
of the stroke
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the
marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me
of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but
bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,--
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the
dawn,
Affable live-oak, leaning low,--
Thus--with your favor--soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
Inward and outward to northward and southward the
beach-lines linger and curl
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, waist-high, 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,
To the terminal blue of the main.
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
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.
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh
and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his
plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and
the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the
marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh are one.
How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of
sleep
Roll in on the souls of men,
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
And I would I could know what swimmeth below with the
tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes
of Glynn.
--Baltimore, 1878
