Archibald Lampman - Inter Vias lyrics

'Tis a land where no hurricane falls, But the infinite azure regards Its waters for ever, its walls Of granite, its limitless swards; Where the fens to their innermost pool With the chorus of May are aring, And the glades are wind-winnowed and cool With perpetual spring; Where folded and half withdrawn The delicate wind-flowers blow, And the bloodroot kindles at dawn Her spiritual taper of snow; Where the limits are met and spanned By a waste that no husbandman tills, And the earth-old pine forests stand In the hollows of hills. 'Tis the land that our babies behold, Deep gazing when none are aware; And the great-hearted seers of old And the poets have known it, and there Made halt by the well-heads of truth On their difficult pilgrimage From the rose-ruddy gardens of youth To the summits of age. Now too, as of old, it is sweet With a presence remote and serene; Still its byways are pressed by the feet Of the mother immortal, its queen: The huntress whose tresses, flung free, And her fillets of gold, upon earth, They only have honour to see Who are dreamers from birth. In her calm and her beauty supreme, They have found her at dawn or at eve, By the marge of some motionless stream, Or where shadows rebuild or unweave In a murmurous alley of pine, Looking upward in silent surprise, A figure, slow-moving, divine, With inscrutable eyes.