I meanwhile in the populous house apart Sit, snugly chambered, and my silent art Uninterrupted, unremitting ply Before the dawn, by morning lamplight, by The glow of smelting noon, and when the sun Dips past my westering hill and day is done; So, bending still over my trade of words, I hear the morning and the evening birds, The morning and the evening stars behold; So there apart I sit as once of old Napier in wizard Merchiston; and my Brown innocent aides in home and husbandry, Wonder askance, @3What ails the boss?@1 they ask, @3Him, richest of the rich, an endless task Before the earliest birds or servants stir Calls and detains him daylong prisoner?@1 He, whose innumerable dollars hewed This cleft in the boar- and devil-haunted wood, And bade therein, far seen to seas and skies, His many-windowed, painted palace rise Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill, A wonder in the forest glade: he still Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark, Scribbles and scribbles, like a German clerk. We see the fact, but tell, O tell us why? My reverend washman and wise butler cry. And from their lips the unanswered questions drop. @3How can he live that does not keep a shop? And why does he, being acclaimed so rich, Not dwell with other gentry on the beach? But harbour, impiously brave, In the cold, uncanny wood, haunt of the fleeing slave?@1 The sun and the loud rain here alternate: Here, in the unfathomable bush, the great Voice of the wind makes a magnanimous sound. Here, too, no doubt, the shouting doves abound To be a dainty; here in the twilight stream That brawls adown the forest, frequent gleam The jewel-eyes of crawfish. These be good: Grant them! and can the thing be understood? That this white chief, whom no distress compels, Far from all compeers in the mountain dwells? And finds a manner of living to his wish Apart from high society and sea fish? Meanwhile at times the manifold Imperishable perfumes of the past And coloured pictures rise on me thick and fast And I remember the white rime, the loud Lamplitten city, shops and the changing crowd And I remember home and the old time, The winding river, the white morning rime, The autumn robin by the riverside, That pipes in the grey eve. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT THE CHURCH DOOR by GEORGE SANTAYANA WHEN SHE COMES HOME by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY THE THROSTLE by ALFRED TENNYSON SONG OF THE PILGRIMS [SEPTEMBER 16, 1620] by THOMAS COGSWELL UPHAM AN EPISTLE TO CURIO by MARK AKENSIDE |