Medrick, waving wide wings low over the breeze-rippled bight;
Osprey, soaring superb overhead in the fathomless blue,
Graceful and fearless and strong, do you thrill with the morning's delight
Even as I? Brings the sunshine a message of beauty for you?

Oh the blithe breeze of the west, blowing sweet from the far-away land,
Bowing the grass heavy-headed, thick crowding, so slender and proud!
Oh the warm sea sparkling over with waves by the swift wind fanned!
Oh the wide sky crystal clear, with bright islands of delicate cloud!

Feel you the waking of life in the world locked long time in the frost,
Beautiful birds, with the light flashing bright from your banner-like wings?
Osprey, soaring on high, in the depths of the sky half lost,
Medrick, hovering low where the sandpiper's sweet note rings!

Nothing am I to you, a blot, perhaps, on the day;
Naught do I add to your joy, but precious you are in my sight;
And you seem on your glad wings to lift me up into the ether away,
And the morning divine is more radiant because of your glorious flight.

O voiceless water loitering down
To wed the Assabet and take thy name,
Taciturn stream! from concord, in the town
Where Hawthorne's hawthorns grew to fame,
(And haply one may yet survive!)
Into thy wave receive a pilgrim's tear
For one just passed! partly a poet-soul
And part a priest-one errant from his sphere,
Too large to serve the little for the whole,
To whom the vanished Pans seemed still alive;

Who, shunning steeples and the crowd, to dwell
Remote, in meadows of his boyhood's love,
Turning his back on heaven, as erst on hell,
Meek lover of the good, though under spell,
Found Brahma's blessing in the sinless grove.
A certain space our Master went astray
From the known path, to wander with the rest
Of those who, dazzled by some sundog's ray,
Sincerely fancying they beheld the day
Dawn against nature's order in the West,
Could couple Christ with Gautama, and bound
The Rock of Ages with a dial's round.

Not “over-soul” nor too much learning led
These gentle pagans to their straw-built shed,
But over-hope, gay substitute for truth
When life's denial breaks the dreams of youth;
Hope of some wondrous Counsellor to come
To strike the oracles of Delphi dumb,
And send back Simon to his nets again—
“The fisher” still, but nevermore of men:
Well might this loftiest thinker of them all
Have smiled to find himself their new St. Paul!

He found the way. Men gathered at his grave
In Sleepy Hollow, and the word “forgive”
Was said on bended knee. Fine soul and brave!
If quaint in rhyme, if no logician gave
Laws to thy thinking, inly sweet and wise,
Long in these woodlands may thine image live!
And many a musing Briton's heart
Shall melt, as oft with moistening eyes
He lets his noisy train depart
To linger where,—O sacred art!
In yonder grave thy Druid lies.