Thoughts Of New England

Gloucester streets walking in Autumn twilight, Past Kineburgh's cottage and old Raven Tavern, That Hoare he kept, the Puritan, who tired Or fired, and took a passage in the 'Mayflower', Gloucester streets walking in frost-clear hour — Of 'Captains Courageous' as a boy read, thinking, And sea-ports, ships, and all that boy desired . . . . Walt Whitman, history-scraps and Huck Finn's cavern: My thoughts went wondering how the New England Folk Walked twilight now, watched stars steady or blinking — If thoughts came Eastward as mine Westward went. Of our 'Citizen', the 'Massachusetts Times', And the boys crying them perhaps about their lanes. But those no historied ground of Roman or Danes. What are the streets that have no memories, That are not underset by ancient rubbish? Where gables overhang, and the quarters clang From Cathedral towers, and the slops or dinner dish, Hurried a man voids handily into the gutter: And ghosts haunt the streets and of old troubles mutter. Where steel and scarlet of the military And routine use flash vivid momentarily; Imagination stricken unaccountably At full day into pictures not looked for even, And children from their play by curfew driven. Are there men of my blood over Atlantic Wondering there what light is growing thick By Severn and what real thing Cotswold is? Are there men walking slow till tiredness leads in To write or read till the night's veil grows thin; Insatiate desiring what hope would win? Is the air clear there as Thoreau's prose, With frost and sparkling water, and day's close As mild, as soft as shows in 'Evangeline'? (Since all verse from the air or earth does win). Do they hear tell of Domesday Book, and not Think of this Gloucester where the scrivener wrote Command of reeves first set their lists to begin? Do they wish walk at evening where the earls went in And William: Are there not crowns of England old That first in Gloucester's Abbey showed their gold? Can villas contain man in unloving hold As here the cornered, the nooked low-ceilinged beetle-browed Houses cloak man in; or the strict thoroughfares Stone or asphalt-paved ally to man? 45 Are there great joys in April her high days For those who cannot high imaginations see Of other men builded, stirred to a great praise? Cotswold earthing profound for white material, Masses of stone gone slender as a silver birch, Upwards in dazzle to an arching azure. O where in the new towns shall recompense come, For the market-days, the week-end trouble without measure, The crowded four ways and cattle markets boom, And country faces seen often with so much pleasure? Can New England think deep thoughts of her bye-ways, Is Abana and Pharpar a balance for Severn receiving Avon, at her knot of highways, Her Abbey township, beneath so high a cloud floor? But nevertheless one would go very willingly At the year's turn, where Washington or Lincoln walked, Or praise 'Drum Taps' or 'This Compost', and hear talked Speech of Lowell, or Hawthorne, or Holmes and be Pleased with citizenship of Gloucester or Worcester And companionship of veterans or veteran's sons Of the Wilderness or Richmond, see the old guns That set Chattanooga's thronged woods astir; Or woke terror in steadfastness with red anger. But not for longer than the strangeness lasted. Severn yet calls not to be resisted: And the mix of Dane thoughts, Roman, with Middle-Age Calls all love out to mark on any page. The glory of Peter's Abbey high up in Summer, Or low in Winter's gloom, and a wavering shape, Are more than is ever seen by foreign comer To Connecticut, or Staten or Providence with its cape, Being loveliness and history and height in one. And there is nothing uprooted that is not changed. Better to stay and wonder in the half light How New England saunters where Kipling loved and ranged, so And watch the starling flocks in first autumn flight. The New World has qualities its own, But the Old not yet decrepit or withered is grown, And brick and timber of age five centuries known Are consolation for poverty enough Against New York, where they say Opera is brilliant, And the byeways with five dollar notes are strown. The stuff of Liberty is a varying stuff, But from Grant's men. Lee's men, nobleness should never want.