The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail:
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed themselves in heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise—but no sail.

In March when the melting eaves are a prism's edge,
And icicles burn at the tips with scarlet flame,
And drip to a rataplan of chrysolites;
When the drift of a white-winged cloud is over the tree tops
That lean to a flapping gale from the yellow ravine—
Then the dream of a garden returned to me, and I walked
Where the stalks of rusted sunflowers lisped the breeze.
And what were last year's failures, frosts and worms?
I would plant again for the joy of growing things;
Fight for the corn of life, for the blossoms of beauty.
And with every spring with a heart that never tired,
The dream of winning a love that should thrive, be free
Of cares that choke, betrayals that break, or doubts
That chill the leaves put forth to a sanguine sun!
O, garden by which I lived! O, earth of my heart!
How was it enriched by the fallen stalks of hope?
What did I gather but strength to struggle in Springs
Of the blue sky thrill of the dream?