Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone- And their king it is who tolls; And his merry bosom swells Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, 90 100 HENRY TIMROD THE COTTON BOLL While I recline At ease beneath This immemorial pine, Small sphere! (By dusky fingers brought this morning here And shown with boastful smiles), I turn thy cloven sheath, Through which the soft white fibres peer, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles 10 20 The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns some city lane Into the restless main, With all his capes and isles! Yonder bird, Which floats, as if at rest, In those blue tracts above the thunder, where And never sound is heard, When, from the City of the Blest, So vast a cirque of summer space As widens round me in one mighty field, Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams And, broad as realms made up of many lands, 30 40 Behind the crimsom hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams And lo! To the remotest point of sight, Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, The endless field is white; And the whole landscape glows, For many a shining league away, As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! And the small charm within my hands- Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see, As if with Uriel's crown, I stood in some great temple of the Sun, Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green With all the common gifts of God, 50 60 |