FOR SKERRYVORE OR love of lovely words, and for the sake Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen, Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled To plant a star for seamen, where was then The name of a strong tower. SKERRYVORE: THE PARALLEL H' ERE all is sunny, and when the truant gull Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing Dispetals roses; here the house is framed Of kneaded brick and the plumed mountain pine, Such clay as artists fashion and such wood As the tree-climbing urchin breaks. But there Eternal granite hewn from the living isle And dowelled with brute iron, rears a tower That from its wet foundation to its crown Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of winds, Immovable, immortal, eminent. Y house, I say. But hark to the MY sunny doves That make my roof the arena of their loves, song: Our house, they say; and mine, the cat declares And spreads his golden fleece upon the chairs; And mine the dog, and rises stiff with wrath If any alien foot profane the path. So, too, the buck that trimmed my terraces, Our whilom gardener, called the garden his; Who now, deposed, surveys my plain abode And his late kingdom, only from the road. M Y body which my dungeon is, And when the night begins to fall When evening takes her on her way, Which is so broad and high that there, As in the topless fields of air, My fancy soars like to a kite And faints in the blue infinite: Which is so strong, my strongest throes As the green sea in fishers' nets, Which is so wholly mine that I Can wield its whole artillery, And mine so little, that my soul Dwells in perpetual control, And I but think and speak and do As my dead fathers move me to: If this born body of my bones The beggared soul so barely owns, What money passed from hand to hand, What creeping custom of the land, What deed of author or assign, Can make a house a thing of mine? |