'Tis a land where no hurricane falls, <br />But the infinite azure regards <br />Its waters for ever, its walls <br />Of granite, its limitless swards; <br />Where the fens to their innermost pool <br />With the chorus of May are aring, <br />And the glades are wind-winnowed and cool <br />With perpetual spring; <br /> <br />Where folded and half withdrawn <br />The delicate wind-flowers blow, <br />And the bloodroot kindles at dawn <br />Her spiritual taper of snow; <br />Where the limits are met and spanned <br />By a waste that no husbandman tills, <br />And the earth-old pine forests stand <br />In the hollows of hills. <br /> <br />'Tis the land that our babies behold, <br />Deep gazing when none are aware; <br />And the great-hearted seers of old <br />And the poets have known it, and there <br />Made halt by the well-heads of truth <br />On their difficult pilgrimage <br />From the rose-ruddy gardens of youth <br />To the summits of age. <br /> <br />Now too, as of old, it is sweet <br />With a presence remote and serene; <br />Still its byways are pressed by the feet <br />Of the mother immortal, its queen: <br />The huntress whose tresses, flung free, <br />And her fillets of gold, upon earth, <br />They only have honour to see <br />Who are dreamers from birth. <br /> <br />In her calm and her beauty supreme, <br />They have found her at dawn or at eve, <br />By the marge of some motionless stream, <br />Or where shadows rebuild or unweave <br />In a murmurous alley of pine, <br />Looking upward in silent surprise, <br />A figure, slow-moving, divine, <br />With inscrutable eyes.<br /><br />Archibald Lampman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/inter-vias/
