Virgilium vidi tantum,—­I have seen
  But as a boy, who looks alike on all,
    That misty hair, that fine Undine-like mien,
  Tremulous as down to feeling’s faintest call;—­
    Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy fame
    That thither many times the Painter came;—­ 230
One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall.

    Swiftly the present fades in memory’s glow,—­
  Our only sure possession is the past;
    The village blacksmith died a month ago,
  And dim to me the forge’s roaring blast;
    Soon fire-new mediaevals we shall see
    Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree,
And that hewn down, perhaps, the beehive green and vast.

    How many times, prouder than king on throne,
  Loosed from the village school-dame’s A’s and B’s, 240
    Panting have I the creaky bellows blown,
  And watched the pent volcano’s red increase,
    Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down
    By that hard arm voluminous and brown,
From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees.

    Dear native town! whose choking elms each year
  With eddying dust before their time turn gray,
    Pining for rain,—­to me thy dust is dear;
  It glorifies the eve of summer day,
    And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 250
    The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns,
The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away.

    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