Classic Poem

Our boyhood's River here from shore to shore
With unrelenting ice is bound;
The wind, by islands where we ranged of yore,
Howls like a famished hound. . . . .

Your letter bids me to your orange groves
With aureate splendor bending low,
And lures to azure inlets and to coves
Of more than sapphire glow;

Entices me to orchards where one sees
The turbaned Hindoo, lithe and mute,
Perched in the branches of your olive-trees
Picking the purpled fruit;

A clime where one may pass the livelong day
'Mid fragrance of December flowers,
With wandering airs of ozone from the Bay
To vivify the hours;

Where you can see each blushing sunrise peep
Above the cloud-born waterfall; —
Each evening watch the belfry-shadows creep
Up the adobe wall;

Far off, the canon and the cliff are yours
Where the undaunted eagles reign, —
Yours, where the Mesa rises and allures
Above the endless plain;

While I, through frosted windows, see the hills
Whiten beneath my sunset view;
On bloomless paths beside the frozen rills
My thoughts return to you:

Summer is yours, but mine the Winter drear;
You breathe the flower; I tread the snows;
Yet I, in spirit, from the sunset here
Shall pluck the crimson rose;

And oft in crystal meadows I shall wade
Through prism-colors of the sleet, —
Through briery upland pastures where each blade
Drops jewels round the feet;

To me will float the red-bird's whistle clear
From snow-bent branches of the fir,
And, footing through the thicket, I will hear
The startled pheasant whirr.

The wave-like snow-drifts by the straggling fence
Shall charm the sight, and seeing these,
In my imagination I shall sense
The surge of Arctic seas:

To me the mile-wide River which unfurls
Its skating surface to our ken,
With joyous bevies of our beauteous girls,
Will bring my youth again:

To me the Christmas holly in our dells
Will bend her scarlet berries low,
And moonlight laughter mixed with sleighing bells
Will drift across the snow:
. . . . . . . . . .

Such slender consolation will be mine,
Brother, while we are kept apart,
Feeling, across the miles, my hand in thine,
Thy heart beside my heart.