So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few, The six old willows at the causey's end (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed nor drew), Through this dry mist their checkering shadows send, Striped, here and there, with many a long-drawn thread, Where streamed through leafy chinks the trembling red, Past which, in one bright trail, the hangbird's flashes blend. Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e'er, 260 Beneath the awarded crown of victory, Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; Though lightly prized the ribboned parchments three, Yet _collegisse juvat_, I am glad That here what colleging was mine I had,-- It linked another tie, dear native town, with thee! Nearer art thou than simply native earth, My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie; A closer claim thy soil may well put forth, Something of kindred more than sympathy; 270 For in thy bounds I reverently laid away That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, That title I seemed to have in earth and sea and sky, That portion of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) Than all the imperfect residue can be;-- The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her the impoverished seasons roll. 280 THE GROWTH OF THE LEGEND A FRAGMENT A legend that grew in the forest's hush Slowly as tear-drops gather and gush, When a word some poet chanced to say Ages ago, in his careless way, Brings our youth back to us out of its shroud Clearly as under yon thunder-cloud I see that white sea-gull. It grew and grew, From the pine-trees gathering a sombre hue, Till it seems a mere murmur out of the vast Norwegian forests of the past; 10 And it grew itself like a true Northern pine, First a little slender line, Like a mermaid's green eyelash, and then anon A stem that a tower might rest upon, Standing spear-straight in the waist-deep moss, Its bony roots clutching around and across, As if they would tear up earth's heart in their grasp Ere the storm should uproot them or make them unclasp; Its cloudy boughs singing, as suiteth the pine, To snow-bearded sea-kings old songs of the brine, 20 Till they straightened and let their staves fall to the floor, Hearing waves moan again on the perilous shore Of Vinland, perhaps, while their prow groped its way 'Twixt the frothed gnashing tusks of some ship-crunching bay.