Primeval Woods

Yes! even here, not less than in the crowd,
Here, where yon vault in formal sweep seems piled
Upon the pines, monotonously proud,
Fit dome for fane, within whose hoary veil
No ribald voice an echo hath defiled —
Where Silence seems articulate; up-stealing
Like a low anthem's heavenward wail: —
Oppressive on my bosom weighs the feeling
Of thoughts that language cannot shape aloud;
For song too solemn, and for prayer too wild, —
Thoughts, which beneath no human power could quail,
For lack of utterance, in abasement bow'd, —
The cavern'd waves that struggle for revealing.
Upon whose idle foam alone God's light hath smiled.
Ere long thine every stream shall find a tongue,
Land of the Many Waters! But the sound
Of human music, these wild hills among,
Hath no one save the Indian mother flung
Its spell of tenderness? Oh, o'er this ground
So redolent of Beauty, hath there play'd no breath
Of human poesy — none beside the word
Of Love, as, murmur'd these old boughs beneath,
Some fierce and savage suitor it hath stirr'd
To gentle issues — none but these been heard?
No mind, no soul here kindled but my own?
Doth not one hollow trunk about resound
With the faint echoes of a song long flown,
By shadows like itself now haply heard alone?
And Ye, with all this primal growth must go!
And loiterers beneath some lowly spreading shade,
Where pasture-kissing breezes shall, ere then, have play'd,
A century hence, will doubt that there could grow
From that meek land such Titans of the glade!
Yet wherefore primal? when beneath my tread
Are roots whose thrifty growth, perchance, hath arm'd
The Anak spearman when his trump alarm'd!
Roots that the Deluge wave hath plunged below;
Seeds that the Deluge wind hath scattered;
Berries that Eden's warblers may have fed,
Safe in the slime of earlier worlds embalm'd:
Again to quicken, germinate and blow,
Again to charm the land as erst the land they charm'd.