Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 3, by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Away northeast is boone island light Last Line: With a deep, hoarse pant against appledore. Subject(s): Isles Of Shoals, New Hampshire | ||||||||
Away northeast is Boone Island light; You might mistake it for a ship, Only it stands too plumb upright, And like the others does not slip Behind the sea's unsteady brink; Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip Upon it a moment, 't will suddenly sink, Levelled and lost in the darkened main, Till the sun builds it suddenly up again, As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp. On the mainland you see a misty camp Of mountains pitched tumultuously: That one looming so long and large Is Saddleback, and that point you see Over you low and rounded marge, Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe Laid over his breast, is Ossipee; That shadow there may be Kearsarge; That must be Great Haystack; I love these names, Wherewith the lonely farmer tames Nature to mute companionship With his own mind's domestic mood, And strives the surly world to clip In the arms of familiar habitude. 'T is well he could not contrive to make A Saxon of Agamenticus: He glowers there to the north of us, Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze, Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to take The white man's baptism or his ways. Him first on shore the coaster divines Through the early gray, and sees him shake The morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines; Him first the skipper makes out in the west, Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous, Plashing with orange the palpitant lines Of mutable billow, crest after crest, And murmurs Agamenticus! As if it were the name of a saint. But is that a mountain playing cloud, Or a cloud playing mountain, just there, so faint? Look along over the low right shoulder Of Agamenticus into that crowd Of brassy thunderheads behind it; Now you have caught it, but, ere you are older By half an hour, you will lose it and find it A score of times; while you look 't is gone, And, just as you've given it up, anon It is there again, till your weary eyes Fancy they see it waver and rise, With its brother clouds; it is Agiochook, There if you seek not, and gone if you look, Ninety miles off as the eagle flies. But mountains make not all the shore The mainland shows to Appledore; Eight miles the heaving water spreads To a long low coast with beaches and heads That run through unimagined mazes, As the lights and shades and magical hazes Put them away or bring them near, Shimmering, sketched out for thirty miles Between two capes that waver like threads, And sink in the ocean, and reappear, Crumbled and melted to little isles, With filmy trees, that seem the mere Half-fancies of drowsy atmosphere; And see the beach there, where it is Flat as a threshing-floor, beaten and packed With the flashing flails of weariless seas, How it lifts and looms to a precipice, O'er whose square front, a dream, no more, The steepened sand-stripes seem to pour, A murmurless vision of cataract; You almost fancy you hear a roar, Fitful and faint from the distance wandering; But 'tis only the blind old ocean maundering, Raking the shingle to and dro, Aimlessly clutching and letting go The kelp-haired sedges of Appledore. Slipping down with a sleepy forgetting, And anon his ponderous shoulder setting, With a deep, hoarse pant against Appledore. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE: 2 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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