Our friend has likened thee to the sweet fern,
Which with no flower salutes the ardent day,
Yet, as the wanderer pursues his way,
While the dews fall, and hues of sunset burn,
Sheds forth a fragrance from the deep green brake,
Sweeter than the rich scents that gardens make.
Like thee, the fern loves well the hallowed shade
Of trees that quietly aspire on high;
Amid such groves was consecration made
Of vestals, tranquil as the vestal sky.
Like thee, the fern doth better love to hide
Beneath the leaf the treasure of its seed,
Than to display it, with an idle pride,
To any but the careful gatherer's heed—
A treasure known to philosophic ken,
Garnered in nature, asking nought of men;
Nay, can invisible the wearer make,
Who would unnoted in life's game partake.
But I will liken thee to the sweet bay,
Which I first learned, in the Cohasset woods,
To name upon a sweet and pensive day
Passed in their ministering solitudes.
I had grown weary of the anthem high
Of the full waves, cheering the patient rocks;
I had grown weary of the sob and sigh
Of the dull ebb, after emotion's shocks;
My eye was weary of the glittering blue
And the unbroken horizontal line;
My mind was weary, tempted to pursue
The circling waters in their wide design,
Like snowy sea-gulls stooping to the wave,
Or rising buoyant to the utmost air,
To dart, to circle, airily to lave,
Or wave-like float in foam-born lightness fair:
I had swept onward like the wave so full,
Like sea weed now left on the shore so dull.
I turned my steps to the retreating hills,
Rejected sand from that great haughty sea,
Watered by nature with consoling rills,
And gradual dressed with grass, and shrub, and tree;
They seemed to welcome me with timid smile,
That said, "We'd like to soothe you for a while;
You seem to have been treated by the sea
In the same way that long ago were we."
They had not much to boast, those gentle slopes,
For the wild gambols of the sea-sent breeze
Had mocked at many of their quiet hopes,
And bent and dwarfed their fondly cherished trees;
Yet even in those marks of by-past wind,
There was a tender stilling for my mind.
Hiding within a small but thick-set wood,
I soon forgot the haughty, chiding flood.
The sheep bell's tinkle on the drowsy ear,
With the bird's chirp, so short, and light, and clear,
Composed a melody that filled my heart
With flower-like growths of childish, artless art,
And of the tender, tranquil life I lived apart.
It was an hour of pure tranquillity,
Like to the autumn sweetness of thine eye,
Which pries not, seeks not, and yet clearly sees—
Which wooes not, beams not, yet is sure to please.
Hours passed, and sunset called me to return
Where its sad glories on the cold wave burn.
Rising from my kind bed of thick-strewn leaves,
A fragrance the astonished sense receives,
Ambrosial, searching, yet retiring, mild:
Of that soft scene the soul was it? or child?
'Twas the sweet bay I had unwitting spread,
A pillow for my senseless, throbbing head,
And which, like all the sweetest things, demands,
To make it speak, the grasp of alien hands.
All that this scene did in that moment tell,
I since have read, O wise, mild friend! in thee.
Pardon the rude grasp, its sincerity,
And feel that I, at least, have known thee well.
Grudge not the green leaves ravished from thy stem,
Their music, should I live, muse-like to tell;
Thou wilt, in fresher green forgetting them,
Send others to console me for farewell.
Thou wilt see why the dim word of regret
Was made the one to rhyme with Margaret.
But to the Oriental parent tongue,
Sunrise of Nature, does my chosen name,
My name of Leila, as a spell, belong,
Teaching the meaning of each temporal blame;
I chose it by the sound, not knowing why;
But since I know that Leila stands for night,
I own that sable mantle of the sky,
Through which pierce, gem-like, points of distant light;
As sorrow truths, so night brings out her stars;
O, add not, bard! that those stars shine too late!
While earth grows green amid the ocean jars,
And trumpets yet shall wake the slain of her long century-wars.