Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GREEN MOUNTAIN, by JOHN WEISS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GREEN MOUNTAIN, by                    
First Line: With jocund friends the island's mount I climb
Last Line: He's comrade still of all the happy scene.
Subject(s): Mount Desert, Maine


WITH jocund friends the island's mount I climb
To kindred gladness that, beyond the wood
Whose pines are heavy with the solitude,
Sacks all the space of sea and sky sublime.

Rocks, left austere by winter, laugh again
With sweet and happy hearts at summer-tide;
O'er cliff and ledge and wave goes laughter wide,
As o'er the sea noon's pelting silver rain.

A flock of little sails below appears
To forage all along the shining waste;
Now huddled, and now scattering, without haste,
For morning waifs, like sea-birds, each one steers.

Of all the sails that catch the sun, and smile,
There's one that takes my own mood out to sea:
Its laughing side is hidden on the lee;
Its shadow tacks to windward all the while.

Mid all the gladness, just a faint reserve
Wafts me apart, but not to scowl and gloom;
The world's wide laughter keeps me in its room, --
My shadow is not sharp enough to swerve.

'T is but the thickness of a sail between.
A cloud has caught its buoyant, gilded woof,
Too thin to keep the sailor's heart aloof:
He's comrade still of all the happy scene.





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