A sense of utter carelessness and grace Of pure abandon in the slumb'rous scene,-- As if the June, all hoydenish of face, Had romped herself to sleep there on the green, And brink and sagging bridge and sliding stream Were just romantic parcels of her dream.
So lone I stood, the very trees seemed drawn In conference with themselves.--Intense--intense Seemed everything;--the summer splendor on The sight,--magnificence!
A babe's life might not lighter fail and die Than failed the sunlight--Though the hour was noon, The palm of midnight might not lighter lie Upon the brow of June.
With eyes upraised, I saw the underwings Of swallows--gone the instant afterward-- While from the elms there came strange twitterings, Stilled scarce ere they were heard.
The river seemed to shiver; and, far down Its darkened length, I saw the sycamores Lean inward closer, under the vast frown That weighed above the shores.
Then was a roar, born of some awful burst!-- And one lay, shrieking, chattering, in my path-- Flung--he or I--out of some space accurst As of Jehovah's wrath:
Nor barely had he wreaked his latest prayer, Ere back the noon flashed o'er the ruin done, And, o'er uprooted forests touseled there, The birds sang in the sun.
O the Lands of Where-Away! Tell us--tell us--where are they? Through the darkness and the dawn We have journeyed on and on-- From the cradle to the cross-- From possession unto loss,-- Seeking still, from day to day, For the lands of Where-Away.
When our baby-feet were first Planted where the daisies burst, And the greenest grasses grew In the fields we wandered through, On, with childish discontent, Ever on and on we went, Hoping still to pass, some day, O'er the verge of Where-Away.
Roses laid their velvet lips On our own, with fragrant sips; But their kisses held us not, All their sweetness we forgot;-- Though the brambles in our track Plucked at us to hold us back-- "Just ahead," we used to say, "Lie the Lands of Where-Away."
Children at the pasture-bars, Through the dusk, like glimmering stars, Waved their hands that we should bide With them over eventide: Down the dark their voices failed Falteringly, as they hailed, And died into yesterday-- Night ahead and--Where-Away?