free-verse82 lines

Poem For The Dedication Of The Fountain At Stratford-On-Avon, Presented By George W. Childs, Of Philadelphia

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Welcome, thrice welcome is thy silvery gleam,

Thou long-imprisoned stream!

Welcome the tinkle of thy crystal beads

As plashing raindrops to the flowery meads,

As summer's breath to Avon's whispering reeds!

From rock-walled channels, drowned in rayless night,

Leap forth to life and light;

Wake from the darkness of thy troubled dream,

And greet with answering smile the morning's beam!

No purer lymph the white-limbed Naiad knows

Than from thy chalice flows;

Not the bright spring of Afric's sunny shores,

Starry with spangles washed from golden ores,

Nor glassy stream Bandusia's fountain pours,

Nor wave translucent where Sabrina fair

Braids her loose-flowing hair,

Nor the swift current, stainless as it rose

Where chill Arveiron steals from Alpine snows.

Here shall the traveller stay his weary feet

To seek thy calm retreat;

Here at high noon the brown-armed reaper rest;

Here, when the shadows, lengthening from the west,

Call the mute song-bird to his leafy nest,

Matron and maid shall chat the cares away

That brooded o'er the day,

While flocking round them troops of children meet,

And all the arches ring with laughter sweet.

Here shall the steed, his patient life who spends

In toil that never ends,

Hot from his thirsty tramp o'er hill and plain,

Plunge his red nostrils, while the torturing rein

Drops in loose loops beside his floating mane;

Nor the poor brute that shares his master's lot

Find his small needs forgot, -

Truest of humble, long-enduring friends,

Whose presence cheers, whose guardian care defends!

Here lark and thrush and nightingale shall sip,

And skimming swallows dip,

And strange shy wanderers fold their lustrous plumes

Fragrant from bowers that lent their sweet perfumes

Where Paestum's rose or Persia's lilac blooms;

Here from his cloud the eagle stoop to drink

At the full basin's brink,

And whet his beak against its rounded lip,

His glossy feathers glistening as they drip.

Here shall the dreaming poet linger long,

Far from his listening throng, -

Nor lute nor lyre his trembling hand shall bring;

Here no frail Muse shall imp her crippled wing,

No faltering minstrel strain his throat to sing!

These hallowed echoes who shall dare to claim

Whose tuneless voice would shame,

Whose jangling chords with jarring notes would wrong

The nymphs that heard the Swan if Avon's song?

What visions greet the pilgrim's raptured eyes!

What ghosts made real rise!

The dead return, - they breathe, - they live again,

Joined by the host of Fancy's airy train,

Fresh from the springs of Shakespeare's quickening brain!

The stream that slakes the soul's diviner thirst

Here found the sunbeams first;

Rich with his fame, not less shall memory prize

The gracious gift that humbler wants supplies.

O'er the wide waters reached the hand that gave

To all this bounteous wave,

With health and strength and joyous beauty fraught;

Blest be the generous pledge of friendship, brought

From the far home of brothers' love, unbought!

Long may fair Avon's fountain flow, enrolled

With storied shrines of old,

Castalia's spring, Egeria's dewy cave,

And Horeb's rock the God of Israel slave!

Land of our fathers, ocean makes us two,

But heart to heart is true!

Proud is your towering daughter in the West,

Yet in her burning life-blood reign confest

Her mother's pulses beating in her breast.

This holy fount, whose rills from heaven descend,

Its gracious drops shall lend, -

Both foreheads bathed in that baptismal dew,

And love make one the old home and the new!

August 29, 1887.