Camden

THIS is the place
Of perfect beauty, even as a face
That time can neither mar nor change,
Nor absence render strange.
Afar I sight thee by thy purple brows
Admired of wandering prows,
And now the blue melts into living green
With violet lights between, —
Hills not too high nor keen
To be beloved. Oh, elsewhere have we seen
Cold barren crags on high,
Snow-fringed, and alien peaks that prick the sky
Remote and isolate, but round all seas
Nothing to rival these!
And now the pier draws nigh,
Behind us fades away the foamy track
That to the world leads back,
Back to a struggling world, wherein the race
Is to the swift, and even the victor’s palm
Is dusty; but the hills rise clean and calm.
The tide goes ebbing, ebbing down the strand,
Leaving a gaunt-ribbed hull far up the sand,
And on the vane the dolphin veers apace,
To point me to the land.

Once more the turnpike will I take,
That, built above the lake,
Winds round the base of old Megunticook,
With rugged pictures that dissolve and pass
One after one, — an amethystine mass
Of cliff, dark trees, gray boulders poised in flight
Down to a field of grass,
Or where the sweet blue waters break,
And on the height seen for a moment, look!
A slender cross of white,
Where the bird hangs her nest,
And from her niche, safe in the granite ledge,
Warming the eggs beneath her breast,
May watch on the horizon’s edge —

Nay, we have left the sea behind,
The uneasy heart-throb of the tide,
Over the peaceful lake to ride,
And the shores close in from hill to hill;
But thought, that will not pause nor bide,
Speeds on o’er meadows waving in the wind,
Thro’ thickets haunted by the whip-poor-will,
To an ancient wood with balsam-breathing sod.
No sound nor ripple of motion anywhere
In all the amber air
Where the great pines go climbing straight to God
And there is no more hath been or shall be, —
I will forget the sea.

Forget the sea? From Battle’s tower to-day,
Below me spreading flat and far
Like a blue map, I saw Penobscot Bay,
Thick-sown with islands green;
Vague on the shore-line far away,
Bluehill and rare Castine,
And yonder Mount Desert, the island queen,
Tinged by the azure mile on mile;
Here Isle au Haut, glancing with opal sheen,
Fair Isleboro, and Vinal Haven’s isle,
While south from Rockland’s harbor bar,
Past Owl’s Head light, prompt as the evening star,
Lo, many a bird-winged barge,
Slow gliding down the misty ocean-marge.
Forget the sea! If once the brow be wet,
If once the cheeks be scourged with stinging spray,
Who shall the sea forget ?
Wine is this mountain-air, but tang of its wine
The sharp breath of the brine.

As we go down, the tide comes pouring in,
Like a pent river, when it finds release,
And from the deep trembles an echo thin;
“Behold, I am bitter, and beneath the sky
No peace nor rest have I,
Only the gift of peace,” —
A voice rising above the ocean din,
Louder than Joy or Sorrow, Strife or Sin.

Melodious axes ring
Beside the pier, music of steel on wood,
And merrily the brown-armed builders sing,
Knowing their work is good.
The ship is all but done at last,
Strong for its first adventure with the vast;
A giant pine tree, true and straight,
Uprises one tall mast,
And now they slowly swing its mate
Beside it, and the tide is at the flood.
Again our boat ploughs up the olive brine
In one pale furrow, and again
The dolphin-craft, veering upon the vane,
Points seaward, and we go,
Long gazing back, until the mountains grow
From out their verdure to one magic line
Of crumpled blue. Farewell, beloved place,
To be remembered, not for some brief space,
But even as a mother’s face,
That time can never mar nor change,
Nor absence render strange.