O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noonday sun of the June day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,-- Aye, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,-- Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast, sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest dark:-- So: Affable live oak, leaning low,-- Thus--with your favor--soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh, that borders a world of sea. Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample the marsh and the sea and the sky! A league and a league of marsh grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main. Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. As the marsh hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God! I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh hen flies