Thoughts in a Hammock
Rocked in some fairy boat,1
By swift fancy set afloat,2
’Twixt the oceans blue and green,3
Of grass beneath, and sky serene,4
Where the streams of dusk
and day5
and day5
Meet and mingle, far away,6
On the universal tide,7
Still with time and life I glide.8
Boat, that, pendant ’mid the trees,9
Swingeth moored, yet sails the seas,10
Stem and stern, from east to west,11
Bound upon an unknown quest,12
Past the marge of night and day,13
Blanched or strewn with starry
spray ;14
spray ;14
By the oar-strokes of the blood,15
Glides the shallop of my mood,16
On the windings of the flood17
Shadowed by the summer wood,18
Dusk with dreams for leaves that play19
With the falling blooms of May.20
Like the web the Fates do spin,21
Helpless man to cradle in—22
Hung, with life, upon a thread,—23
Here I sing and o’er my head,24
Maze of apple boughs and leaves,25
Meshed wherein, my thought enweaves26
Tapestry, phantasmic, strange,27
Shot with shifting dyes of change.28
So my shallow bark and frail29
Spreads a rich emblazoned sail,30
Filled, as now the summer breeze31
Fans my brain and stirs the trees32
Where, a hidden heart of fire,33
Strives the moon in her desire34
Still to pierce the leafy fret,35
Her celestial seat to get.36
Cynthia’s self that silver shape,37
Boskage dark, she doth escape,38
Long her gleaming body hid,39
Forth from its embraces’ slid,40
Doth naked glorious emerge41
On the lucent starry verge42
Let me linger in the wood,43
Hear the sound of piping’s rude,44
Watch the shapes of nymph and faun,45
Centaurs fleet across the lawn,46
Satyrs brown, in rythmic dance,47
By the stream great Pan, perchance,48
Hidden in the vocal reed—49
All the happy antique breed.50
I would turn again the book,51
Yet again, to steal a look52
Back to where Times’ firstling ran—53
Arboreal ancestral man :54
Wooing shy his dusky mate,55
Wild-eyed, half articulate ;56
In his rude canoe, askance57
See him poise his flint-tipped lance,58
Flashing in the ardent noon59
O’er the sedgy broad lagoon,60
When Thames’ reeds the riverhorse61
Crushed in his unconscious force.62
Swinging on the pendant bough,63
Had he sweet content enow ?64
Bashing in the primal sun,65
Recked he how his race should run ?66
How, for forest night of trees,67
Spreading cities, dense as these68
Where the shade of gilded pride69
Starved and savage men should
hide,70
hide,70
Human vampires, hawks, and flies71
Gliding snakes, and lustrous eyes,72
Dainty beauty plumaged fair,73
Hollow masks for smiling care,74
Hopeless toil that smileth not,75
Misery untold, forgot :76
Where the throng of fashion flaunts77
Where, in dark unwholesome haunts,78
Lurks a darker race, to prowl79
Desert streets when night doth
scowl,80
scowl,80
Desert stoney streets and bare,81
’Neath a strange electric glare,82
Fiery-eyed to track them down,83
Homeless on the heartless town.84
Ah ! could early man, or late,85
Set ways, or Nature’s, straight,86
Who life’s stream doth careless pour,87
Lets the cup brim o’er and o’er,88
Who will stink, or drinking dream,89
With the chosen shim the cream,90
Struggle with the ravening swine91
For residue, or helpless whine,92
Lazarus at Dives’ gate,93
Dives, at his feast of state,94
Rising with a hungry heart,95
As, one by one, life’s guests depart.96
Could we chain those monsters up97
That on human lives do sup,98
Shameless lust of rule and gold.99
Lawless greed grown overbold,100
Vice, and drink with palsied hand,101
Riding down the joyless land,102
Then, if humanity could be103
From these and other tyrants free104
To win its bread to win, I wot,105
Vine and fig and breathing plot,106
Joy in work, and joy in leisure,107
Love and art to fill life’s measure,108
Force and fraud might vainly rage109
To see, new-born, the golden age.110
Sailing thus as thought doth steer,111
With the moon through cloud & clear,112
Fancy fluttering at the prow,113
Sirens singing soft and low,114
From the opal shores & streams,115
Where they dye the cloth of dreams116
From the present the past,117
Have I touched the land at last !118
Vovaging the world around,119
Yet anchored still to English
ground.120
ground.120