Then strayed the poet, in his dreams,
By Rome and Egypt’s ancient graves;
Went up the New World’s forest streams,
Stood in the Hindoo’s temple-caves;

Walked with the Pawnee, fierce and stark,
The sallow Tartar, midst his herds,
The peering Chinese, and the dark
False Malay uttering gentle words.

How could he rest? even then he trod
The threshold of the world unknown;
Already, from the seat of God,
A ray upon his garments shone;—­

Shone and awoke the strong desire
For love and knowledge reached not here,
Till, freed by death, his soul of fire
Sprang to a fairer, ampler sphere.

Then—­who shall tell how deep, how bright
The abyss of glory opened round? 
How thought and feeling flowed like light,
Through ranks of being without bound?

The fountain. deg.

Fountain, that springest on this grassy slope,
Thy quick cool murmur mingles pleasantly,
With the cool sound of breezes in the beach,
Above me in the noontide.  Thou dost wear
No stain of thy dark birthplace; gushing up
From the red mould and slimy roots of earth,
Thou flashest in the sun.  The mountain air,
In winter, is not clearer, nor the dew
That shines on mountain blossom.  Thus doth God
Bring, from the dark and foul, the pure and bright.

This tangled thicket on the bank above
Thy basin, how thy waters keep it green! 
For thou dost feed the roots of the wild vine
That trails all over it, and to the twigs
Ties fast her clusters.  There the spice-bush lifts
Her leafy lances; the viburnum there,
Paler of foliage, to the sun holds up
Her circlet of green berries.  In and out
The chipping sparrow, in her coat of brown,
Steals silently, lest I should mark her nest.

Not such thou wert of yore, ere yet the axe
Had smitten the old woods.  Then hoary trunks
Of oak, and plane, and hickory, o’er thee held
A mighty canopy.  When April winds
Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush
Of scarlet flowers.  The tulip-tree, high up,
Opened, in airs of June, her multitude
Of golden chalices to humming-birds
And silken-winged insects of the sky.

Frail wood-plants clustered round thy edge in Spring. 
The liverleaf put forth her sister blooms
Of faintest blue.  Here the quick-footed wolf,
Passing to lap thy waters, crushed the flower
Of sanguinaria, from whose brittle stem
The red drops fell like blood.  The deer, too, left
Her delicate foot-print in the soft moist mould,
And on the fallen leaves.  The slow-paced bear,
In such a sultry summer noon as this,
Stopped at thy stream, and drank, and leaped across.