TO GOVERNOR SWAIN. DEAR GOVERNOR, if my skiff might brave The mountain stream that loops and swerves It may not be; too long the track The sun has set on fair Naushon The ocean disk is rolling dark In shadows round your swinging bark, While yet the yellow sunset fills The stream that scarfs my spruce-clad hills; The day-star wakes your island deer It may not be; O would it might, What golden hours would come to life, With stitches in his belted side; While Time, caught fast in pleasure's chain, His double goblet snapped in twain, And stood with half in either hand, Both brimming full, but not of sand! It may not be; I strive in vain To break my slender household chain, Three pairs of little clasping hands, One voice, that whispers, not commands. They raise along my threatened path; My feet are rooted to the soil. Only the soaring wish is free! And that, dear Governor, flies to thee! PITTSFIELD, 1851. TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND. THE seed that wasteful autumn cast So, parted by the rolling flood, The love that springs from common blood Needs but a single sunlit hour Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; Unharmed its slumbering life has flown, From shore to shore, from zone to zone, Where summer's falling roses stain The tepid waves of Pontchartrain, 1852. Or where the lichen creeps below Though fiery sun and stiffening cold The love that with its fountain rose, Unchanged by space, unwronged by time, |