Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SILVER SPRING, by JAMES RYDER RANDALL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SILVER SPRING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When the lord of light revealed
Last Line: Undine! Undine! Thou are princess of the parables of old!
Subject(s): Nature; Spring; Springs (water)


WHEN the Lord of Light revealed
The flashing radiance of his shield,
Glorifying wave and field;
When he felt he must expire,
Then his orb with blazing ire
Shot his dying shafts of fire;
When the palpitating breeze
Smote the gitterns of the trees,
Like the shout of distant seas;
When the jeweled birds that sing
Wooed on rainbow-tinted wing,
I beheld thy face of splendor blushing with the wild and tender, Silver Spring!

Virgin! when the shadows roll
To the ice-embattled pole,
From thy sweet, pellucid soul—
Each angelic host on high
Sees in that cerulean eye
Blossom-beauties of the sky,
(Blesséd Spirits! ye who dwell
Far beyond the ether swell,
How ye anthem, "It is well!")
On thy bosom let me seem
Kerneled in a Bagdad dream,
Rocked to slumber by a seraph over thy celestial stream!

On a fairy, pensive pinion
Gloat I o'er thy deep dominion,
Shaming e'en the Augustinian;
Wonders rushing thicker—faster!
Here a porphyry pilaster,
Here a temple alabaster;
And the sunshine as it falls
Splinters on quintillion halls
And a miracle of walls!
Now thy bannerets are beaming—
Now with mystic music gleaming
O'er a city—gem-girt city—in a gush of dervish dreaming!

Here, ah here, the Indian maiden,
When with love and languor laden,
Sought thee, as the cells of Aidenn;
With a world of gentle guesses,
In thy flood her floating tresses
Poured their cascade of caresses!
Here her hero from the rattle
Of the crimson blows of battle,
Slept beneath her soothing prattle—
Slept—but, ere the sun's decline,
Like the lightning-riven pine,
And his heart's blood, Silver Billow, swept its throbbings into thine.

When the sad and solemn moon
Muses o'er the lone lagoon,
And laughs the melancholy loon;
When the crooning winter breeze,
Hapless from the Hebrides,
Chafes the dead cathedral trees
'Mid the vultures' muffled wails,
Stifled by the panther-hails,
Shuddering up palmetto trails;
When the globe is wrapt in sleep,
When the gnomes their vigils keep
By the mountain and the deep—
I can fancy phantom things,
On their thunder-tarnished wings,
Soaring with a fallen grandeur over these enchanted springs!

Dusky plume and siroc frown,
Lo! the night comes trampling down
O'er thy palaces and town!
Lo! a legion like the stars,
Speeding from their crystal cars,
Leap beyond the sable bars;
How they glittered as they roll'd!
How thy streets are stormed with gold!
Undine! Undine! thou are Princess of the Parables of Old!





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