 | Specimens of American poetry |  |
26
[Pleasures of Childhood]
“A thousand wildering reveries led astrayMy better reason, and my unguarded soul
Danced like a feather on the turbid sea
Of its own wild and freakish phantasies.
At times, the historic page would catch my eye,
And rivet down my thoughts on ancient times,
And mix them with the demigods of old.
[OMITTED] How I loved
To ascend the pyramids, and in their womb
Gaze on the royal cenotaph, to sit
Beneath thy ruin'd palaces and fanes,
Balbec or princely Tadmor, though the one
Lurk like a hermit in the lonely vales
Of Lebanon, and the waste wilderness
Embrace the other. [OMITTED]
[OMITTED] Along the stream,
That flow'd in summer's mildness o'er its bed
Of rounded pebbles, with its scanty wave
Encircling many an islet, and its banks
In bays and havens scooping, I would stray,
And dreaming, rear an empire on its shores.
Where cities rose, and palaces and towers
Caught the first light of morning, there the fleet
Lent all its snowy canvas to the wind,
And bore with awful front against the foe.
[OMITTED]
There many a childish hour was spent; the world
That moved and fretted round me, had no power
To draw me from my musings, but the dream
Enthrall'd me till it seem'd reality;
And when I woke, I wonder'd that a brook
Was babbling by, and a few rods of soil,
Cover'd with scanty herbs, the arena where
Cities and empires, fleets and armies rose.”
| Specimens of American poetry | |