The Pensive Traveller

I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever,
At the bottom of my dream.

For though the caves were rabitted,
   And the well sweeps were slanted,
Each house seemed not inhabited
   But haunted.

The pensive traveller held his way,
   Silent & melancholy,
For every man an ideot was,
   And every house a folly.

Methinks all things have traveled since you shined, 
But only Time and clouds, Time's team, have moved ; 
Again foul weather shall not change my mind, 
But in the shade I will believe what in the sun I loved. 

What's the railroad to me?
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows,
And makes banks for the swallows,
It sets the sand a-blowing,
And the blackberries a-growing.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
          By a chance bond together,
  Dangling this way and that, their links
          Were made so loose and wide,
                                        Methinks,
                   For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,
          And sorrel intermixed,
  Encircled by a wisp of straw
          Once coiled about their shoots.
                                        The law
                  By which I'm fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out
          Those fair Elysian fields,
  With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
          Doth make the rabble rout
                                        That waste
                   The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
          Drinking my juices up,
  With no root in the land
          To keep my branches green,
                                        But stand
                   In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem
          In mimicry of life,
  But ah! the children will not know
          Till time has withered them,
                                        The woe
                   With which they're rife.
 
But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
          And after in life's vase
  Of glass set while I might survive,
          But by a kind hand brought
                                        Alive
                   To a strange place.
 
That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
          And by another year,
  Such as God knows, with freer air,
         More fruits and fair flowers
                                        Will bear,
While I droop here.

I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever,
At the bottom of my dream.