At first a mere thread of a footpath half blotted
out by the grasses
Sweeping triumphant across it, it wound between hedges of roses
Whose blossoms were poised above leaves as pond lilies float on
the water,
While hidden by bloom in a hawthorn a bird filled the morning with
singing.
It widened a highway, majestic, stretching ever
to distant horizons,
Where shadows of tree-branches wavered, vague outlines invaded by
sunshine;
No sound but the wind as it whispered the secrets of earth to the
flowers,
And the hum of the yellow bees, honey-laden and dusty with pollen.
And Summer said, “Come, follow onward, with no thought save the
longing
to wander,
The wind, and the bees, and the flowers, all singing the great song
of Nature,
Are minstrels of change and of promise, they herald the joy of the
Future.”
Later the solitude vanished, confused and distracted
the road
Where many were seeking and jostling. Left behind were
the trees
and the flowers,
The half-realized beauty of quiet, the sacred unconscious communing.
And now he is come to a river, a line of gray, sullen water,
Not blue and splashing, but dark, rolling somberly on to the ocean.
But on the far side is a city whose windows flame gold in the sunset.
It lies fair and shining before him, a gem set betwixt sky and water,
And spanning the river a bridge, frail promise to longing desire,
Flung by man in his infinite courage, across the stern force of
the water;
And he looks at the river and fears, the bridge is so slight,
yet he ventures
His life to its fragile keeping, if it fails the waves will engulf
him.
O Arches! be strong to uphold him, and bear him across to the city,
The beautiful city whose spires still glow with the fires of sunset!
***
More poems by Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell (1874 – 1925) was an American poetess that belonged to the informal imagist, an early modernist movement, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.