Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 2, by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: All this you would scarcely comprehend Last Line: Perpetual movement with perpetual rest! Subject(s): Isles Of Shoals, New Hampshire | ||||||||
All this you would scarcely comprehend, Should you see the isle on a sunny day; Then it is simple enough in its way, -- Two rocky bulges, one at each end, With a smaller bulge and a hollow between; Patches of whortleberry and bay; Accidents of open green, Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray, Like graveyards for ages deserted; a few Unsocial thistles; an elder or two, Foamed over with blossoms white as spray; And on the whole island never a tree Save a score of sumachs, high as your knee, That crouch in hollows where they may, (The cellars where once stood a village, men say,) Huddling for warmth, and never grew Tall enough for a peep at the sea; A general dazzle of open blue; A breeze always blowing and playing rat-tat With the bow of the ribbon round your hat; A score of sheep that do nothing but stare Up and down at you everywhere; Three or four cattle that chew the cud Lying about in a listless despair; A medrick that makes you look overhead With short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey, And, dropping straight and swift as lead, Splits the water with sudden thud; -- This is Appledore by day. A common island, you will say; But stay a moment: only climb Up to the highest rock of the isle, Stand there alone for a little while, And with gentle approaches it grows sublime. Dilating slowly as you win A sense from the silence to take in. So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, The granite beneath you so savagely bare, You well might think you were looking down From some sky-silenced mountain's crown, Whose far-down pines are wont to tear Locks of wool from the topmost cloud. Only be sure you go alone, For Grandeur is inaccesssibly proud, And never yet has backward thrown Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd; To more than one was never shown That awful front, nor is it fit That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed Until the self-approving pit Enjoy the gust of its own wit In babbling plaudits cheaply loud; She hides her mountains and her sea From the harriers of scenery, Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay, Mouthing and mumbling the dying day. Trust me, 'tis something to be cast Face to face with one's Self at last, To be taken out of the fuss and strife, The endless clatter of plate and knife, The bore of books and the bores of the street, From the singular mess we agree to call Life, Where that is best which the most fools vote is, And to be set down on one's own two feet So nigh to the great warm heart of God, You almost seem to feel it beat Down from the sunshine and up from the sod; To be compelled, as it were, to notice All the beautiful changes and chances Through which the landscape flits and glances, And to see how the face of common day Is written all over with tender histories, When you study it that intenser way In which a lover looks at his mistress. Till now you dreamed not what could be done With a bit of rock and a ray of sun; But look, how fade the lights and shades Of keen bare edge and crevice deep! How doubtfully it fades and fades, And glows again, yon craggy steep, O'er which, through color's dreamiest grades, The yellow sunbeams pause and creep! Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray, Now shadows to a filmy blue, Tries one, tries all, and will not stay, But flits from opal hue to hue, And runs through every tenderest range Of change that seems not be change, So rare the sweep, so nice the art, That lays no stress on any part, But shifts and lingers and persuades; So soft that sun-brush in the west, That asks no costlier pigments' aids, But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints, Indifferent of worst or best, Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hints And gracious preludings of tints, Where all seems fixed, yet all evades, And indefinably pervades Perpetual movement with perpetual rest! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 3 by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 5 by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL SPANIARDS' GRAVES AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS by CELIA LEIGHTON THAXTER PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 4 by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 6 by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AFTER THE BURIAL by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AUF WIEDERSEHEN! SUMMER by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AUSPEX by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL BEAVER BROOK by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL COMMEMORATION ODE READ AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |
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