PRETTY MARSH

  

Few visitors there are to this dim place,

Where sixty years ago a park was built

Beneath a canopy of evergreens

By the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Here, even on the hottest summer day,

The temperature may stay at ten degrees

Below the rest of all Mount Desert Isle.

We stagger to the bottom of a steep

And wooded hillside to the picnic site,

Which covered for protection from the rain,

Extends a stairway to the shore below—

A beach of rocks and driftwood, empty shells;

No sand to cushion soles of shoeless feet.

The surf is rarely rough here, for the span

Of Bartlett Island shields us from the storms;

Although the cold sea water creates fog

And mystery within the harbor’s fold.

The beauty of the landscape there below,

Or here above, seen from a picnic bench,

Consists of what the mind elaborates

In harmony with its intrinsic laws

And the Ideas that from Nature’s flux unfold

As mountain, tree and shrub, and sun that fades

Beyond the island in the glowing clouds—

Unfold out of our inner being here,

Surrounding us with what we call the world.