In reflective mood by the wall I wander;
The hoary stones have set my heart astir;
My thoughts take shape and move beside me in the guise
Of the stern men who built the wall in early olden days. 
One by one the melancholy phantoms go stepping from me,
And I follow them in and out among the stones. 
I think of the days long gone,
Flown like birds beyond the ramparts of the world. 
The patient, sturdy men who piled the stones
Have vanished, like the days, beyond the bounds
Of earth and mortal things. 
From their humble, steadfast lives has sprung the greatness of my nation. 
I am bone of their bone, breath of their breath,
Their courage is in my soul. 
The wall is an Iliad of granite:  it chants to me
Of pilgrims of the perilous deep,
Of fearless journeyings and old forgotten things. 
The blood of grim ancestors warms the fingers
That trace the letters of their story;
My pulses beat in unison with pulses that are stilled;
The fire of their zeal inspires me
In my struggle with darkness and pain. 
These embossed books, unobliterated by the tears and laughter of Time,
Are signed with the vital hands of undaunted men. 
I love these monoliths, so crudely imprinted
With their stalwart, cleanly, frugal lives.

From my seat among the stones I stretch my hand and touch
My friend the elm, urnlike, lithesome, tall. 
Far above the reach of my exploring fingers
Birds are singing and winging joyously
Through leafy billows of green. 
The elm-tree’s song is wondrous sweet;
The words are the ancientest language of trees—­
They tell of how earth and air and light
Are wrought anew to beauty and to fruitfulness. 
I feel the glad stirrings under her rough bark;
Her living sap mounts up to bring forth leaves;
Her great limbs thrill beneath the wand of spring.

This wall was builded in our fathers’ days—­
Valorous days when life was lusty and the land was new. 
Resemble the walls the builders, buffeted, stern, and worn. 
To us they left the law,
Order, simplicity, obedience,
And the wall is the bond they gave the nation
At its birth of courage and unflinching faith. 
Before the epic here inscribed began,
They wrote their course upon a trackless sea. 
O, tiny craft, bearing a nation’s seed! 
Frail shallop, quick with unborn states! 
Autumn was mellow in the fatherland when they set sail,
And winter deepened as they neared the West. 
Out of the desert sea they came at last,
And their hearts warmed to see that frozen land. 
O, first gray dawn that filtered through the dark! 
Bleak, glorious birth-hour of our northern states! 
They stood upon the shore like new created men;
On barren solitudes of sand they stood,
The conquered sea behind, the unconquered wilderness before. 
Some died that year beneath the cruel cold,
And some for heartsick longing and the pang
Of homes remembered and souls torn asunder. 
That spring the new-plowed field for bread of life
Bordered the new-dug acre marked for death;
Beside the springing corn they laid in the sweet, dark earth
The young man, strong and free, the maiden fair and trustful,
The little child, and the uncomplaining mother.