1845-47
THE PRESENT TIME
409
I seek the present time,
No other clime,
Life in to-day,—
Not to sail another way,—
To Paris or to Rome,
Or farther still from home.
That man, whoe'er he is,
Lives but a moral death
Whose life is not coeval
With his breath.
My feet forever stand
On Concord fields,
And I must live the life
Which their soil yields.
What are deeds done
Away from home?
What the best essay
On the Ruins of Rome?
The love of the new,
The unfathomed blue,
The wind in the wood,
All future good,
The sunlit tree,
The small chickadee,
The dusty highways,
What Scripture says,
This pleasant weather,
And all else together,
The river's meander,
All things, in short,
Forbid me to wander
