The Savannah morning news., 1901-06-23

Wnen lovers pace timidly down through
the green colonnades.
OF the dim sweet woods, oS the dear
dark woods.
OF the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand
beach within
The wide sea-marshes Of Glynn;-
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon
day fire.
Wildwood privacies. closets of lone de-
sire,
Chamber from chamber parted with way
ering arras of leaves
Cells for the passionate pleasure OF pray
err to the soul that gTieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of
saints through the wood,
COOL for the dutiful weighing of i'll with
GOOD
o braided dusks of the oak and woven
shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun OF the
June-day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and held
you fast in mine;
But now when the noon Is no more and
riot is rest.
And the sun is await at the ponderous
gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the
wood-aisle doth seem
Like lane into heaven that leads from
a dream,-
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath
drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and
the wearisome sound of the stroke
or the scythe of time and the troWel of
trade is low.
And belief overmasters doubt, and know
that l know.
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great
compass within.
That the length and the breadth and the
sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they
have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when
breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and
dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles
of the plain
Oh, now unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood / am drawn, I
am drawn.
Where the gray beach glimmering runs,
as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest-dark:-
SO:
Affable live-oak, leaning low
Thus-with your favor-soft, with rev.
erent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord
of the landD
Bending your beauty aside. with a step 1
sand
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
BY world of marsh that borders a world
of sea.
Sinuous southwark and sinuous northward
the shimmerng band
OF the sand-beach fastens the fringe of
the marsh to the folds of the land.
Inward and outward to northward and
southwark the beach-lines linger and
AS a silver wrought garment that cings
to and follows the firm sweet limbs
of a girl.
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving
again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach waivers away to a
dim gray looping of light.
And what if behind me to westward the
wall of the woods stands high?
The world lies east: how ample, the
marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass,
waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and ali of hight and unlocked
with light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the
terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad
e.. discussion of sin.
BY the length and the breadth and the
sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and
nothing withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and
offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and
the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man
who hath nightly won
God out of knowledge and good out Of in
finite pain
And sight out Of blindness and purity out
of a stain.
AS the marsh-hen secretly builds on the
watery sod.
Behold / will build me a nest on the
greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the
marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space