The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[232] The very waves that washed the sand
     Below him, he had seen before
Whitening the Scandinavian strand
     And sultry Mauritanian shore.
From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas
     Palm-fringed, they bore him messages;
He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again,
     And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain.

His memory round the ransacked earth
     On Puck's long girdle slid at ease;
And, instant, to the valley's girth
     Of mountains, spice isles of the seas,
Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guess
     At truth and beauty, found access;
Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite,
     Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight.

Untouched as yet by wealth and pride,
     That virgin innocence of beach:
No shingly monster, hundred-eyed,
     Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach;
Unhoused, save where, at intervals,
     The white tents showed their canvas walls,
Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air,
     Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.

Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand
     A one-horse wagon slowly crawled,
Deep laden with a youthful band,
     Whose look some homestead old recalled;