Throbbed and circled? then away,
Through the wildwoods opposite,
Torn and scattered, morning-lit,
Vanished into dewy gray?—
Vague as in romance we saw,
From the fog one riven trunk,
Talon-like with branches shrunk,
Thrust a monster dragon claw.
And we climbed for hours through
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To a wooded rock, whence those
Undulating leagues of blue
Summits,—mountain-chains that lie
Dark with forest, bar on bar,—
Ranged their wild, irregular,
Purple peaks beneath a sky
Ocean-azure. Range on range
Billowed their enormous spines,
Where the rocks and priestly pines
Sat eternal, without change.
We were sons of Nature then:
She had taken us to her,
Drawn us, bound with brier and burr,
Closer her than other men:
Intimates of all her moods,
From her bloom-anointed looks,
Wisdom of no man-made books
Learned we in those solitudes:
How the seed contained the flower;
How the acorn held the oak;
How within the vine awoke
The wild impulse still to tower:
How in fantasy or mirth,
Springing when she summoned there,
Sponge-like fungi everywhere
Bulged, exuded from the earth:
Coral-vegetable things,
That the underworld exhaled,
Bulbous, fluted, ribbed, and scaled,
Many colored and in rings,