The Cotton Boll
While I reclineAt ease beneathThis immemorial pine,Small sphere!(By dusky fingers brought this morning hereAnd shown with boastful smiles),I turn thy cloven sheath,Through which the soft white fibres peer,That, with their gossamer bands,Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands,And slowly, thread by thread,Draw forth the folded strands,Than which the trembling line,By whose frail help yon startled spider fledDown the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed,Is scarce more fine;And as the tangled skeinUnravels in my hands,Betwixt me and the noonday light,A veil seems lifted, and for miles and milesThe landscape broadens on my sight,As, in the little boll, there lurked a spellLike that which, in the ocean shell,With mystic sound,Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round,And turns some city laneInto the restless main,With all his capes and isles!
Yonder bird,Which floats, as if at rest,In those blue tracts above the thunder, whereNo vapors cloud the stainless air,And never sound is heard,Unless at such rare timeWhen, from the City of the Blest,Rings down some golden chime,Sees not from his high placeSo vast a cirque of summer spaceAs widens round me in one mighty field,Which, rimmed by seas and sands,Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beamsOf gray Atlantic dawns;And, broad as realms made up of many lands,Is lost afarBehind the crimson hills and purple lawnsOf sunset, among plains which roll their streamsAgainst the Evening Star!And lo!To the remotest point of sight,Although I gaze upon no waste of snow,The endless field is white;And the whole landscape glows,For many a shining league away,With such accumulated lightAs Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day!Nor lack there (for the vision grows,And the small charm within my hands—More potent even than the fabled one,Which oped whatever golden mysteryLay hid in fairy wood or magic vale,The curious ointment of the Arabian tale—Beyond all mortal senseDoth stretch my sight’s horizon, and I see,Beneath its simple influence,As if with Uriel’s crown,I stood in some great temple of the Sun,And looked, as Uriel, down!)Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all greenWith all the common gifts of God,For temperate airs and torrid sheenWeave Edens of the sod;Through lands which look one sea of billowy goldBroad rivers wind their devious ways;A hundred isles in their embraces foldA hundred luminous bays;And through yon purple hazeVast mountains lift their plumed peaks cloud-crowned;And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps,An unhewn forest girds them grandly round,In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps!Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gazeUpon this loveliest fragment of the earth!Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest raysAbove it, as to light a favorite hearth!Ye Clouds, that in your temples in the WestSee nothing brighter than its humblest flowers!And you, ye Winds, that on the ocean’s breastAre kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers!Bear witness with me in my song of praise,And tell the world that, since the world began,No fairer land hath fired a poet’s lays,Or given a home to man!
But these are charms already widely blown!His be the meed whose pencil’s traceHath touched our very swamps with grace,And round whose tuneful wayAll Southern laurels bloom;The Poet of “The Woodlands”, unto whomAlike are knownThe flute’s low breathing and the trumpet’s tone,And the soft west wind’s sighs;But who shall utter all the debt,O Land wherein all powers are metThat bind a people’s heart,The world doth owe thee at this day,And which it never can repay,Yet scarcely deigns to own!Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly singThe source wherefrom doth springThat mighty commerce which, confinedTo the mean channels of no selfish mart,Goes out to every shoreOf this broad earth, and throngs the sea with shipsThat bear no thunders; hushes hungry lipsIn alien lands;Joins with a delicate web remotest strands;And gladdening rich and poor,Doth gild Parisian domes,Or feed the cottage-smoke of English homes,And only bounds its blessings by mankind!In offices like these, thy mission lies,My Country! and it shall not endAs long as rain shall fall and Heaven bendIn blue above thee; though thy foes be hardAnd cruel as their weapons, it shall guardThy hearth-stones as a bulwark; make thee greatIn white and bloodless state;And haply, as the years increase—Still working through its humbler reachWith that large wisdom which the ages teach—Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace!As men who labor in that mineOf Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bedOf ocean, when a storm rolls overhead,Hear the dull booming of the world of brineAbove them, and a mighty muffled roarOf winds and waters, yet toil calmly on,And split the rock, and pile the massive ore,Or carve a niche, or shape the archëd roof;So I, as calmly, weave my woofOf song, chanting the days to come,Unsilenced, though the quiet summer airStirs with the bruit of battles, and each dawnWakes from its starry silence to the humOf many gathering armies. Still,In that we sometimes hear,Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woeNot wholly drowned in triumph, though I knowThe end must crown us, and a few brief yearsDry all our tears,I may not sing too gladly. To Thy willResigned, O Lord! we cannot all forgetThat there is much even Victory must regret.And, therefore, not too longFrom the great burthen of our country’s wrongDelay our just release!And, if it may be, saveThese sacred fields of peaceFrom stain of patriot or of hostile blood!Oh, help us, Lord! to roll the crimson floodBack on its course, and, while our banners wingNorthward, strike with us! till the Goth shall clingTo his own blasted altar-stones, and craveMercy; and we shall grant it, and dictateThe lenient future of his fateThere, where some rotting ships and crumbling quaysShall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas.