BY an inn of wildest Norway — A dark fiord below, And the peaks of the Norska-field, above, In a waste of gleaming snow; And between the sombre fir-trees, The mead where the kine fed free, And a mountain torrent leaping down To be lost in the Maelstrom sea — There, in a narrow garden, One breezy August morn, I saw, beside its hardy flowers, A cluster of Indian Corn! And I said to blue-eyed Lena With braided flaxen hair, The child of the inn who had brought me forth To see her small parterre, 'Your land lies far to the frozen north, And a day your summer spans; Why do you plant the tropic Maize When frost the harvest bans? Barley and oats and rye you may reap Ere yet the snows fall cold, But the stately Maize, the grain of the sun, Will never yield its gold.' ''Tis true,' the maiden answered, 'That frost our harvest bans, But we plant the beautiful, waving Maize! To please the Americans! They smile when they see its shining leaves, And say, on their boundless plains It grows like a forest, rich and tall, In the warmth and the mellow rains; And the bins are filled with its blessed gold Before the bright year wanes.' 'O child,' I said, 'you have planted well!' And I thought, that August morn, As I looked at peak and stream and tree, The dark fiord and the grassy lea, There was naught so fair on shore or sea As that cluster of waving Corn. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INTO BATTLE by JULIAN GRENFELL ON HEARING A LITTLE MUSIC-BOX by JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT KIT CARSON'S RIDE by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER BINGEN ON THE RHINE by CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH SHERIDAN NORTON OUR MASTER by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER LOST AT SEA by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH ON THE KING'S ILLNESS by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD |