I Wonder

I wonder if in that far isle,     Some child is growing now, like me     When I was child : care-pricked, yet healed the while     With balm of rock and sea.     I wonder if the purple ring     That rises on a belt of blue     Provokes the little bashful thing     To guess what may ensue,     When he has pierced the screen, and holds the further clue.     I wonder if beyond the verge     He dim conjectures Englands coast:     The land of Edwards and of Henries, scourge     Of insolent foemen, at the most     Faint caught where Cumbria looms a geographic ghost.     I wonder if to him the sycamore     Is full of green and tender light;     If the gnarled ash stands stunted at the door,     By salt sea-blast defrauded of its right;     If budding larches feed the hunger of his sight.     I wonder if to him the dewy globes     Like mercury nestle in the caper leaf;     If, when the white narcissus dons its robes,     It soothes his childish grief;     If silver plates the birch, gold rustles in the sheaf.     I wonder if to him the heath-clad mountain     With crimson pigment fills the sensuous cells;     If like full bubbles from an emerald fountain     Gorse-bloom luxuriant wells     If God with trenchant forms the insolent lushness quells.     I wonder if the hills are long and lonely     That North from South divide;     I wonder if he thinks that it is only     The hither slope where men abide,     Unto all mortal homes refused the other side.     I wonder if some day he, chance-conducted,     Attains the vantage of the utmost height,     And, by his own discovery instructed,     Sees grassy plain and cottage white,     Each human sign and pledge that feeds him with delight.     At eventide, when lads with lasses dally,     And milking Pei sits singing at the pail,     I wonder if he hears along the valley     The winds sad sough, half credulous of the tale     How from Slieu-whallian moans the murdered witches wail.     I wonder if to him " the Boat," descending     From the proud East, his spirit fills     With a strange joy, adventurous ardour lending     To the mute soul that thrills     As booms the herald gun, and westward wakes the hills.     I wonder if he loves that Captain bold     Who has the horny hand,     Who swears the mighty oath, who well can hold,     Half-drunk, serene command,     And guide his straining bark to refuge of the land.     I wonder if he thinks the world has aught     Of strong, or nobly wise,     Like him by whom the invisible land is caught     With instinct true, nor storms, nor midnight skies     Avert the settled aim, or daunt the keen emprise.     I wonder if he deems the English men     A higher type beyond his reach,     Imperial blood, by Heaven ordained with pen     And sword the populous world to teach;     If awed he hears the tones as of an alien speech     Or, older grown, suspects a braggart race,     Ignores phlegmatic claim     Of privileged assumption, holding base     Their technic skill and aim,     And all the prosperous fraud that binds their social frame.     Young rebel ! how he pants, who knows not what     He hates, yet hates : all one to him     If Guelph, or Buonaparte, or sans-culotte,     If Strafford or if Pym     Usurp the clumsy helm, if England sink or swim!     Ah ! crude, undisciplined, when thou shalt know     What good is in this England, still of joys     The chiefest count it thou wast nurtured so     That thou mayst keep the larger equipoise,     And stand outside these nations and their noise.