Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems/Sunday Revery
SUNDAY REVERY
Beyond my dingy window pane,
This beamy Sunday morn,
I watch the red-breast on the vane
And the ravens robbing corn;
Hard by, the Alabama boils
Its sallow flood along,
With drift-wood biers and forest spoils-—
A melancholy throng!
The rich horizon melts away
To an illumined arch,
With summer tresses all astray
Upon the brows of March;
The birds, inebriate with glees,
Seem happiest when they sing,
Thrilling the aromatic trees
With symphonies of Spring.
The pulse of nature throbs anew
Impassioned of the sun;
The violet, with eyes of blue,
Is modest as a nun.
The roses reek not of the strife
That crashes up the North;
Alas! the mockery of life
When Death is striding forth.
An alien in this lonely land,
I sound an alien strain,
Until my own fair State shall stand
Inviolate again;
The long-lost Pleiad of our sky
Is glimmering still afar,
And nations yet shall see on high
That bright and blessed star.
The church bells toll their solemn chime,
From out the minster eaves,
Knelling some old religious rhyme,
Half stifled by the leaves.
A thousand miles away, I hear
Those grand Cathedral notes,
Which made my youth a fairy sphere
With cymbal-clashing throats.
Vibrating to each sturdy tone,
My soul remembers well
The mild Madonna’s statue-stone
Within its ivory cell;
The ritual read, the chanting done—
The belfry music roll’d,
And all my faith, like Whittington,
Was in the tales it told!
And, oh! I feel as men must feel
Who have not wept for years;
Upon my cheek behold the seal
Of consecrated tears.
A mighty Sabbath calm is mine
That baffles human lore,
A resurrection of Lang Syne
A guiltless child once more.
And mother’s school-boy with his mimes,
This beamy Sunday morn,
Forgets the grim, tumultuous times
That hardened him in scorn.
Forgets terrific ocean days
Beyond the tropic gates,
Where the Magellan clouds down-gaze
On Patagonian Straits.
He nothing heeds the long despair
Within the savage swamp,
The jungle and the thicket where
The serpent tribes encamp;
He little heeds the dream of Fame,
Its treason or its trust,
The hope of a sonorous name—
A requiem from the dust.
But oh, he heeds Elysian hours
That hint of Long Ago!
Those dreamful days in college towers
He never more shall know—
The home he never more may see,
A Paradise to him—
The books he read at Mother’s knee
When her dear eyes grew dim!
O Mother—Mother! Tears must fleet
Along the battle track
Ere yet thy lonely heart can greet
Its weary wanderer back—
A deathless love these tears bespeak,
For thy devotion shed,
With thy pure kisses on my cheek,
Thy blessing on my head!