TO THE DANDELION.
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
This poem, like Bryant’s “Waterfowl,” like many of Longfellow’s, speaks of the objects of nature in a reflective, almost religious tone, portraying the love of our American poets for “these living pages of God’s book.”
Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
An El Dorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample round
May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer blooms may be.
Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age to rob the lover’s heart of ease;
’Tis the spring’s largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God’s value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye,
Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time.
Not in mid-June the gold cuirassed bee
Feels a more summerlike warm ravishment
In the white lily’s breezy tent,
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.
How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe.
And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look,
On all these pages of God’s book.
THE BALLAD OF THE BOAT.
BY RICHARD GARNETT.
This poem has passed in American books of selections as having been written by an unknown “R. Garrett,” this being mainly the consequence of an error in editing the little book called “Sea and Shore,” some twenty years ago. It now, however, appears as the work of a man dear to many Americans, Dr. Richard Garnett, late of the British Museum.
The stream was smooth as glass. We said: “Arise, and let’s away.”
The Siren sang beside the boat that in the rushes lay,
And spread the sail and strong the oar, we gayly took our way.
When shall the sandy bar be crost? When shall we find the bay?
The broadening flood swells slowly out o’er cattle dotted plains;
The stream is strong and turbulent, and dark with heavy rains;
The laborer looks up to see our shallop speed away.
When shall the sandy bar be crost? When shall we find the bay?