Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE CLEARING, by FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN Poet's Biography First Line: Here, where the river wheels Last Line: Replace it with the creature. Subject(s): Nature | ||||||||
Here, where the River wheels Through countries called the midland, Of this fair tract, the flower and crown, Once stood a wild of woodland: But now no belt of brown Beech, alder, ash, or oaken, Is left: and Autumn's Lamp reveals All barren, bald, and broken. A slope of rugged marl-- For copse and dreamy dingle, The larches burned, the birches flayed, Or gone for beam and shingle: The beeches in whose shade The hunter shaped his paddle, With scrawly bush and brushwood-snarl, Have vanished, stock and staddle. Beside the Run whose flow the season touched with flowers, Or softly staunched with fallen leaves, Or fed with perfumed showers, A shirt with tattered sleeves Slaps in the gust of summer, And dimly, soapy breathings blow Across the vagrant roamer. Here, where the golden grace Of moonlight fell in shatters, By dark, a dingy, flickering line Frets on the tossing waters: For here, where then the pine Tanned with his droppings scanty This rock, the Poet's resting-place Is propt, an Irish shanty. O not upon the edge Of grove, or ranging river, At eve, or in the general day, Where'er thy steps endeavor, Shall thee such rest delay, O dreamer in the Shadow-- By axe and beetle, blast and wedge, Now torn from marge and meadow; Thou, whom no sorrow sears, Nor sour mischances harden, Will seek no more the pitcher plant To deck thy slender garden, In this thy holy haunt: Gone are the happy bowers, And thou apart in other years Must rove for other flowers. The Spring wind will not come Now like a pleasant rumor, Nor the sultry song of harvest-fly To sting the ear of Summer. And when the woods are dry, Or red with Autumn's dawning, This bay will miss a music from Dim arch or crimson awning; Yet when November rains Shall settle on the forest, And wash the color from the wood, His darlings from the florist, 'T will seem a glimpse of good, A compensation tender, Remembering that to this remains No beauty now to render; And that, for what we love, Though doubt and dread benumb us, The gracious Past, the yielded boon, Can ne'er be taken from us: Then let us hold what's gone-- And hug each greener minute, Though shanties smoke in every cove And Paddies rule the senate; Yes, though for belt and bower The hard dry tangle bristles, And the bloomy hollows swarm and burn With tickseed, tares, and thistles, And the River runs forlorn-- We go not unrequited, Whilst memory glasses heaven and flower Wherein our love delighted. And may this Picture gay, Deep rooted in my bosom, The blue above forever seal, Forever shade the blossom Unswept by worldly steel Or Sorrow's fire and powder, Give lordlier off the limb, and sway The surgy summit prouder. But if through bough and butt, Time's dull steel chops and craunches And lumber lies for noble stems, And wreck for wreathing branches, And all the glory dims-- May I, for deep-loved Nature, Though brute his being, and base his hut, Replace it with the Creature. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INTERRUPTED MEDITATION by ROBERT HASS TWO VIEWS OF BUSON by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: HOME by LYN HEJINIAN WRITING IS AN AID TO MEMORY: 17 by LYN HEJINIAN LET US GATHER IN A FLOURISHING WAY by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA IN MICHAEL ROBINS?ÇÖS CLASS MINUS ONE by HICOK. BOB BREADTH. CIRCLE. DESERT. MONARCH. MONTH. WISDOM by JOHN HOLLANDER VARIATIONS: 16 by CONRAD AIKEN UNHOLY SONNET 13 by MARK JARMAN THE CRICKET by FREDERICK GODDARD TUCKERMAN |
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