VI. Rich gift of God! A year of time What pomp of rise and shut of day, What hues wherewith our Northern clime Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay, What airs outblown from ferny dells, And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells, What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers, Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours! VII. I know not how, in other lands, The changing seasons come and go; What splendors fall on Syrian sands, What purple lights on Alpine snow! Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits On Venice at her watery gates; A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale. VIII. Yet, on life's current, he who drifts Is one with him who rows or sails And he who wanders widest lifts No more of beauty's jealous veils Than he who from his doorway sees The miracle of flowers and trees, Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer! IX. The eye may well be glad that looks Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall; But he who sees his native brooks Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. The marble palaces of Ind Rise round him in the snow and wind; From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles, And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles. X. And thus it is my fancy blends The near at hand and far and rare; And while the same horizon bends Above the silver-sprinkled hair Which flashed the light of morning skies On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes, Within its round of sea and sky and field, Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed. XI. And thus the sick man on his bed, The toiler to his task-work bound, Behold their prison-walls outspread, Their clipped horizon widen round! While freedom-giving fancy waits, Like Peter's angel at the gates, The power is theirs to baffle care and pain, To bring the lost world back, and make it theirs again! XII. What lack of goodly company, When masters of the ancient lyre Obey my call, and trace for me Their words of mingled tears and fire! I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, I read the world with Pascal's eyes; And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere, And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near. XIII. Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say, "In vain the human heart we mock; Bring living guests who love the day, Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock! The herbs we share with flesh and blood Are better than ambrosial food With laurelled shades." I grant it, nothing loath, But doubly blest is he who can partake of both.