And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be! The tide is in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night. And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn. ____ Baltimore, 1878. Clover. Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats. Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields, My large unjealous Loves, many yet one -- A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all, Fair tilth and fruitful seasons! Lo, how still! The midmorn empties you of men, save me; Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear. I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine, Holding the hills and heavens in my heart For contemplation. 'Tis a perfect hour. From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day Has rippled as a brook right pleasantly Half-way to noon; but now with widening turn Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked, And rounds into a silver pool of morn, Bottom'd with clover-fields. My heart just hears Eight lingering strokes of some far village-bell, That speak the hour so inward-voiced, meseems Time's conscience has but whispered him eight hints Of revolution. Reigns that mild surcease That stills the middle of each rural morn -- When nimble noises that with sunrise ran About the farms have sunk again to rest; When Tom no more across the horse-lot calls To sleepy Dick, nor Dick husk-voiced upbraids The sway-back'd roan for stamping on his foot With sulphurous oath and kick in flank, what time The cart-chain clinks across the slanting shaft, And, kitchenward, the rattling bucket plumps Souse down the well, where quivering ducks quack loud, And Susan Cook is singing. Up the sky The hesitating moon slow trembles on, Faint as a new-washed soul but lately up From out a buried body. Far about, A hundred slopes in hundred fantasies Most ravishingly run, so smooth of curve That I but seem to see the fluent plain